Burn Marks and Stench

I officially admit to having a problem with stoves...I think I should permanently be kept away from electric stoves and kitchen objects that can burn without immediately flaming up. I think tonight the count of the things I've burnt has officially gone up to 4. Let me recount for all of you exactly what I've managed to burn in the past few years and how. "How" being more important--obviously!
So, Object numero UNO: My mom's nice, big, whistling kettle. I believe I burnt this during the fall exams in my second year. I put some water to boil and went and lay down on the couch figuring that when the kettle whistled I'd wake up and take it off the stove. Well, as luck would have it, I hadn't really put on the whistling thing on right so...yes, you guessed right...it didn't whistle and I woke up to the smell of burning fiber glass or whatever those kettles are made of and the sound of the smoke detector. Not good. And when I turned the stove off and tried to lift the kettle off the thing it wouldn't budge :S

Object Number 2: Yet another kettle...I hope you can notice the trend. Revolves around all-nighters and the need for caffeine. So, this time the kettle was much smaller and one of those glass ones with a plastic lid. This one was a little scarier than the other one. And I truly believe that if it hadn't been for my sixth sense yelling that trouble was literally "around the corner" I would've burnt the house down 'cause well...the water evaporated, and then the plastic lid melted and landed in the base of the kettle and eventually caught fire 'cause plastic tends to do that. So, when I got to the kitchen there were flames reaching to the exhaust and my first impulse was to douse the flames with water. Now, this would all be well and good if I had turned off the stove and if it hadn't been, as mentioned earlier, ELECTRIC. I hope you all know that you don't douse a heated electric coil with water 'cause I forgot all about it and did just that till my brother came racing up the stairs from the basement (at 3:00 in the morning), grabbed the flaming kettle and put it under running water in the sink and turned the stove off...SAVED!

Object Number 3 &4(today): Those lids my mom likes to cover the stoves with...yup, always so happens that I turn the wrong one on and then the food is cold and the lid on the stove behind the pan gets all charred and starts stinking of burnt paint and the like...Almost always happens when I try to warm something while I'm watching something on TV. *sigh*

So, yeah...after all the kettles I had burnt my mom finally gave up and got an electric kettle which thank God i can't burn...I just hope I don't end up burning down my house one day:S ...Now, that's a scary thought!

Further Randomness

I sorta remember now what I had intended to write in my previous post. This by no means encompasses ALL of what I had thought of penning down but it is a start. I think I wanted to start off previously by talking about how much I enjoy (read love) being at York. There's always something happening...Never a dull moment. Like the anti-imperialism protest that took place last thursday. Very interesting. There were actual police choppers circling the main part of the campus and there was a riot that erupted inside the main Vari Hall rotunda between police and protestors. Protestors got beat up and arrested and what not. Now, the protestors claim that they had been observing peace while it was the cops who instigated the assault. Obviously, not something the university administration or the cops agree with...There is footage of the violence at the protest though. I'll post the link and you can judge for yourself who started the whole thing. Although when it was shown on campus by people supporting the cause of "free speech" on campus there were those who were very vocal about the fact that the footage was all B/S and it wasn't possible to tell who started it. A prof was quick to point out to these folks that there were people who specialized in determining who started what so that task should be left up to the experts....Here's the link for all interested parties: http://auto_sol.tao.ca

Other randomness I was going to discuss related to being sick of hearing about EYE-RACK...seriously...if its going to be in the news so much and people are going to discuss it as much as they currently are then they should realize that its pronounced EE-RAQ and not EYE-RACK...And oh do I dread the day when they start saying both EYE-RACK and EYE-RAN in the same sentence....I don't know if I'll be able to contain myself... Give the country SOME dignity. Atleast say its name properly. Think about how you would feel if someone constantly pronounced your name wrong...its pretty much the same thing. Anyways, I shall stop now since the battery on my laptop has all but died. No music today...

Random

I had all these great ideas about what I wanted to write but currently as I sit here poised to put into words all the random things that have entered my mind over the last little while I am at a loss for words. All those thoughts have disappeared into thin air and I think I'm beginning to sound repetitive. I'm actually currently sitting in the library by a window overlooking the backside of some building I can't recognize and all I see is big dumpsters. Not a very inspiring sight...trust me. So, I guess I'll get back to the nitty gritties of management accounting which is the most boring thing you could EVER have to study. So, I think I will turn off my music player. For those interested I was listening to a remix of the song "tere bin nahi lagda dil" by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan which is featured in "Bend It Like Bekham". I couldn't find a link to the remix on the net so I'll put up the link to the original for those interested:

http://www.muziqpakistan.com/ref4.php?song=906

Another song that I am currently RE-hooked on is "Mann Ki Lagan" by Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (nephew and pupil of the guy above) which was featured in the Indian flick "Paap". Enjoy.

http://ww.smashits.com/player/ra/ondemand/raplayer.asp?22458

I'm off to study accounting. Someone save me...Please, please, please....

Thought Processes Resulting from a Walk from Vari Hall to SSB

You know what I despise and can't seem to escape? Cigarette smoke.

As I walked from Vari Hall to the Schulich building this afternoon I realized that it was EVERYWHERE. Now, mind you, this is not much of a walk as far as walks are concerned--about six minutes or so. However, it was like I had smoke blown in my face at every step and since I got it blown in my face the minute I stepped out of Vari Hall I decided to count. ELEVEN is what the figure came out to. The first 3 were right outside the doors to Vari Hall as one would expect. No surprise there. Then as I tried to cover the distance as fast as possible so as to avoid the snow and cold I got only about a few metres from the doors when a guy walked by me with a cigarette hanging off his lips. Number 4. A little bit more and a I encounter a lady hurriedly walking in the opposite direction balancing books and a coffee cup but also insisting on holding the cigarette between her fingers. Then I hit the GO bus stand and 3 guys standing in line taking those "precious" puffs before they had to get on the bus for about an hour or so. That brings the count to 8. (The category of smokers I call the "bus-line" smokers are the most interesting because they will often miss the bus if they haven't finished their smoke instead of just stubbing the damn thing out and getting out of the cold and onto the bus. The logic evades me). Then there was some peace. I could actually breath in the cold winter air. But the peace only lasted till I hit another entrance and another set of doors. 3 more people smoking at the entrance to the Schulich building. So, there we have it...11 smokers on the way to Schulich.

I tell ya, I can't escape it. Not at home and definitely not outside. I think I may have to threaten to move out to get my dad to quit but I doubt if it'll work. I think I'll take up permanenet residence in a public building and never go outside (too extreme you say? what is a person to do?) The sad thing is, the smartest of men (I mean a general men..women are not excluded) smoke and quite heavily. Now, I don't know if smartness has a direct link to smoking and killing yourself, slowly but surely, or if the smart ones in this world think that they need some vice to set off how smart they are. I will probably NEVER understand what the fascination with smoking is. I've heard excuses like "oh, its good for relieving stress". What are you trying to say? That those of us who don't smoke don't stress or have not found ways to deal with it. 15-20 years ago if they'd said "its cool" I would have agreed but not today. Not with all we know now. The worst thing I heard related to this was a piece on a Pakistani radio station not so long ago (webcasts..woohoo!). The reporter asked a group of girls in their late teens/early twenties why they smoked and they said "Oh, you know everyone has problems and stresses. Some related to school, others to relationships and life. We do it 'cause it helps. It probably doesn't but its a mental thing. We think it does so we smoke. We all smoke." Then he asked a 16 year old guy why HE smoked and he said something that really made me sit up. He said "Oh, I do it because its cool. These days a lot of people are doing drugs 'cause its the cool thing to do. You know, so if its the cool thing to do then probably will do it". Can you imagine the SHOCK I was in? Unbelievable in this day and age. Somebody has to tell these kids that "cool" is NOT stupidly following what a few influential kids around you are doing. I think someone needs to air those anti-drug use and anti-smoking commercials from the "truth" organization in Pakistan. We need to make the problems public instead of treating them as taboo. OK, I know I have a penchant for rambling so I will stop now and pursue that accounting assignment that I initially logged on to do. Went off on a complete tangent from accounting. *SIGH*.

Song playing on MP3 Player: "The blower's daughter" by Damien Rice

Men and their Women

I don't know quite what to make of this article. I don't know if I totally agree with what the author's trying to get at but I can't totally refute it either. I think I need a male perspective...
----------------------------------------------------------
Jan. 16, 2005. 01:00 AM
Today's man just wants mommy--Maureen Dowd (Toronto Star)

A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."
I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.
Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy I know put it, they look upon the men they work for as "the moon, the sun and the stars." It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming their Sun Gods.
In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.
In James Brooks' Spanglish, Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid.
The maid, who cleans up after Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in Network if she'd had to stay home, or Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction without the charm.
The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis' Love, Actually, a 2003 holiday hit.
The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.
(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned off?)
Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.
As John Schwartz of The New York Times wrote recently, "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame."
A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.
As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, summed it up for reporters: "Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women." Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.
"The hypothesis," Brown said, "is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize the risk of raising offspring that are not their own."
Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands.
A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and reported last week, suggested that smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it is a plus for men.
The prospect for marriage increased by 35 per cent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 per cent drop for each 16-point rise.
So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to — unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to.
I asked the actress and writer Carrie Fisher, on the East Coast to promote her novel The Best Awful, who confirmed that women who challenge men are in trouble.
"I haven't dated in 12 million years," she said drily. "I gave up on dating powerful men because they wanted to date women in the service professions. So I decided to date guys in the service professions. But then I found out that kings want to be treated like kings, and consorts want to be treated like kings, too."

REMINISCING (Hope I spelt that right)

Funniest thing happened yesterday. I was waiting for my accounting tutorial to start at 5:30pm and at about 5:26 or so I was in the basement of the building doing some stuff and my friend was waiting for a me a little ways away talking to some other people we know. And while this is happening all of a sudden we're immersed into darkness...PITCH BLACK. The minute the lights go out I begin to hear people going "Oh my God! What's happening?" and you can hear girls shrieking (loudest of which were the girls my friend was talking to). The lights were out for a total of maybe about ooooohh...20 seconds (tops) I'd say before the generators kicked in and we got partial power returned to the building.

The whole episode reminded me of Pakistan though. Brought back a flood of memories gathered over an entire childhood. Power outages there were (and still are) the norm. The minute u had one drop of rain or even an intimation that it MIGHT rain we'd lose all traces of electrical power. If the power went out in the day it was a pain 'cause although you could see you'd sweat like a pig due to the heat. The nights weren't so bad depending on the time of year and I remember we always did make the most of 'em. We never screamed or anything when the power went out...What was the point? We merely stood our ground till our eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and then we'd grope around and get to the nearest candle and box of matches. Light the candle and find our way to where the others were. If it was a cool, clear night we'd put out the chairs in the yard (or lawn as we call it back home) and sit around and talk. Or we'd bring out the straw mats and place 'em on the roof (there are obviously no slanted roof tops in that part of the world). Then we'd sit around for hours playing cards or singing or concocting some other plan to cause some more mischief. (There were definite advantages to living in a house with not only your immediate family but also your uncle, aunt, cousins, and grandparents--there was always someone to cause mischief with and always someone who could be on the receiving end of all we'd cooked up).

I think we've forgotten how to enjoy the little things in life. Just sitting around and watching the night sky or camping out in the yard. I know I for one would complain about being bored and just sit in front of the TV set and watch it for hours rather than turn the TV off and go sit in the yard. The blackout in the summer of 2003 definitely hurt a lot of people/businesses financially and also hurt a lot of people on a physical/psychological level (getting stuck in an elevator or subway couldn't have been a very pleasant experience) but I also believe that a lot of us who were home DID enjoy it a lot. At our home we BBQ-d because our electric stove wouldn't work. We brought out the battery-powered radio and enjoyed the music under the night sky (probably the first time I saw stars from my Mississauga home). We took a walk through the neighbourhood, said "hello" to neighbours we hadn't spoken to in all the months/years we'd been living there. All because everyone was out on the street with nowhere to go. It was pleasant and I wish they'd happen more often. Atleast it makes one realize that there's more to this life than all the material things we're always so busy chasing.

Random song--None...didn't turn the player on tonight. Maybe next time.

Bay Street's Army & Other Short Stories

This morning I had to go downtown to attend to some business and had to go early so I was part of the rush hour traffic. As I waited at the GO station to board my train towards Union I noticed a group of people come onto the platform. Now, I'm sure they weren't doing this intentionally (and I'm sure they didn't even notice) but as a bystander I found it really amusing how this group of eight (yeah...an even number..imagine that!) came out in like a line 4 long and 2 deep. So it looked like there were 8 soldiers marching towards something. At that moment I thought how all those people really DID represent an army that keeps the engine of economy running. I could call them the lubricant but then my whole soldier analogy wouldn't make sense would it?? (btw, although I sound like it sometimes, I'm really not anti-corporation/anti-capitalism...if anything I believe that we--as citizens of the world--have failed...but that is yet another story for another time).

Then as the train started rolling and I noticed the people around me I was hit with another thought. TOO MANY PEOPLE GO TO WORK TO PERFORM TASKS THEY HATE. There were, ofcourse, the few who were on the train all chirpy and alive talking to others about what they do but there were far too many who were just sitting there with drone-like expressions on their faces and most probably thinking "How much longer before I don't have to do this anymore?" Now, that's one sort of person I'd rather not be. I'd rather be unemployed than doing something I don't like. (HAHA...wait till I'm starving and I'll work no matter how much I hate it. Darn necessity)

As I got off the train and made my way towards Bay Street I could hear the guys playing the violin and the guitar at the entrance to the subway station and I saw the guy selling flowers at the corner of Bay and Front Streets. Same guy I saw a couple weeks ago. I think he's onto something. That spot is like gold. Last chance for all the men who forget those days the women in their lives would like them to remember. See the flower vendor right before you enter the subway station and realize "Oh Crap! Its my wife's birthday and I forgot to get her a gift." Flowers to the rescue.

I have FAR too much time on my hands (or not--which is worse)

So here I am once more. I'm thinking I will add another post to this site tonight primarily because I have 2 chapters of accounting to read for my class at 8:30 and I obviously need to do something to put that off as long as possible. So I've turned the audio player on random and as it plays "random" songs I will try to churn out some meaningful thoughts that MIGHT catch your fancy. Here we go...

Today as I sat in the library reading my Organizational Structure textbook I learnt that the company Johnson&Johnson (yes..the same folks who made the shampoo you used as a baby and who make those glade scented oils--the commercials of which I'm sure we're all sick of watching) is actually divided into 180 divisions!! Can you believe that?? Lemme write it out again...ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY divisions. If Johnson&Johnson is SO large I'm sure Pepsi, Coca Cola, and GE aren't too far behind (or maybe they're bigger...eeks). As I read that bit of information and comitted it to the memory bank God gave me I started thinking whether there were actually ANY countries with as many departments. Maybe the United States but I for one can't think of any other countries with that many departments...Ofcourse, I haven't conducted that kind of research(yet) so I could be wrong but I doubt I'd be too far off. Afterall isn't there some statistic that says that some of these large Multinationals (MNCs as they are more lovingly referred to in the business world) are larger than the economies of a lot of the developing countries in the world. Just imagine the extent of the exploitation that takes place on a daily basis in the underdeveloped countries where a lot of these MNCs operate and to where they outsource a huge chunk of their operations. The countries have no choice BUT to allow these companies to operate in their countries because their concern is with their populace being employed...Now, you're thinking "that's not so bad...symbiotic relationship". Alas, we forget what these organizations pay the people who work for them. While we in North America with our minimum wage laws (in Canada atleast) and benefit packages increase the expenses of these corporations they reduce their expenses and attempt to maximize their bottom line by operating in countries where they incur the least wage expenses. And they say its the end of imperialism...humph...i need proof!! Just got morphed in my opinion.

To those of you wondering...the "random" song that is playing as I end this blurb goes something like this:

"If I could then I would go wherever you will go
Way up high or down low...I'll go wherever you will go"
--The Calling (ofcourse)

My Salaam to the World

So, I have finally been convinced that I should start up my own blog...never thought I'd have anything interesting enough to write about but I'm not one to pass up my 15 seconds of fame in case you pass by and DO find something remotely interesting. I figured that at the least I'd have a forum from which to bitch and complain about the world. Publish my views on all that goes on in this world which I don't agree with. I don't need a publishing house or a newspaper to approve of what I write or figure out whether I'm too much of a risk...I'm my own publishing house from this day forward...MUAHAHAHA