This is Calcutta, Bohemia is Dead

Recently I went and saw my first musical-to-theatre production in about as long as I can remember. Rent is a musical about the interconnecting lives of seven friends in New York City, struggling to get by. I'd like to call them hard working, but the truth is they weren't. They're all involved in some form of the arts, trying to make money and perfect their respective opuses (I actually looked it up, its opuses, not opi). Though the movie/musical was real interesting, one of the major feelings I couldn't shake was that this lifestyle is the exact polar opposite of the direction most of us brownies are heading in.

As children we all aspire to the professional fields, as businessmen/women, engineers, and of course the most ubiquitous of the bunch, doctors. I'm concerned with reflecting on the culture, how we're groomed differently then these artists striving to get by on songs, videos, and their performances alone, trying to make sense of life.

I never had a particular amount of difficulty growing up. I've always had a direction to head in, a guiding hand of sorts in my family and friends. The obvious "I'm thankful" applies, but this movie did a good job of displaying what happens taking the road to Bohemia. As far as I know, Bohemia is the romanticized concept that applied to artists and writers trying to live, as wikipedia puts it, "a non-traditional lifestyle." Sounds about right, especially compared to the relevant tradition we follow, to live life trying to break into a professional field.

The movie gave me conflicting signals though. Sure they're all freezing to death and dying of AIDS, but at least they have love. The movie doesn't really even end on much of a happy note. One of the members dies of AIDS, another nearly kills herself because shes a druggy, and then they decide "Oh, here's a movie the film geeks made documenting our happier times together." They roll that movie showing some of their happy times, and the musical ends. That's a cold analysis, and there's more to it, but regardless, the bohemian lifestyle comes with its own set of problems, problems that outweigh the need to "pursue your passion."

I'd like to live life as a free spirited bohemian just as much as the next person, doing what I want, but that's not the way society works. You grow up, get a job, support a family, and continue the life to the perfect grave. Along the way a lotta stuff happens that I'm leaving out, and as a result, that certainly sounds about as morose a summary of life as I've ever heard. Truth be told, there are, as the cast of Rent puts it:

525,600 minutes - how do you measure,
measure a year?
In daylights,
in sunsets,
in midnights,
in cups of coffee?

So it's alright, the point is that you should pursue your passions, as long as you make your time here worthwhile. Don't sit around painting all day. Don't sit around playing your guitar for the whole day, something my roommate frequently does, regardless of the fact that he's got a biochem exam the following day (though I'll admit if I knew how to play the guitar as well as him I'd probably do the same).

It's good that we got religion to justify our existence, the belief that this life is temporary. I understand that religion is there for a lot more then to justify why we live, but one of the things I'm the most thankful is that I don't find myself constantly asking "Why are we here?" That question is already answered by Islam, so I don't have to spend my whole life pondering existentialism. Instead I can listen to Straylight Run sing about Existentialism on Prom Night, pray Isha, and go to sleep. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

Sing me something soft,
Sad and delicate,
Or loud and out of key,
Sing me anything...

Does that even fit into the context of my post? I don't think it does, but it's just such a good song. Sauce out.

I've got a crush on you

Forgive me for being blunt, but I realized I have a crush on someone recently. Let me get it out of the way that I'm not going to pursue it, and I don't expect anything to actually come of it, but it's a good, nostalgic feeling. I feel like I'm back in high school, replete with the requisite passing of notes, "I like/don't like you" checkboxes, and questions of "Do you like him/her?" vs. "Do you like like him/her?"

... Ok so maybe not so much on the note passing... or the checkboxes, or really even the questioning, but the fact remains, that having a crush on someone is something I haven't had in a while, and its alright with me, even though it is in this specific case one of those unobtainable occurences. It's a fun thing to talk about though, with the whole butterflies, and heart beating faster, and sweaty palms feeling.

... Ok so maybe not so much on the sweaty palms, or the butterflies, but I coulda swore one time my heart was beating faster then regular and I was coincidentally thinking about her. It's fun to idly daydream and wonder how things could be in the future, even if in all likelihood they won't turn out that way. I'm convinced that the ability to dream is one of the things that makes humans such unique creatures.

I'm not too beat up or depressed about the unachievability of the situation though, I'm a realist, I understand what is and isn't within my reach, and like I've said before, I'm smart enough to realize that I'm twenty, and I'm stupid. I don't plan on making the same mistakes that a lot of individuals a few years older then me have made though, and I can instead learn from their pitfalls without falling into my own.

One of the things I love about my parents is the absolute amount of faith they put in me... though I'm sure there have been occasions where that faith was a little bit misplaced. My dad always tells me that I'm smart enough to make socially-charged decisions here better than he can, so it frequently falls on me to decide what to do. I think I've done pretty well so far, no baby mama drama here... Or is there?

Ok who the hell am I kidding, no, none of that, at all. Either way, how often is it that you meet someone that seems to have so much in common with you? It's not every day you meet someone else who stays up late at night watching Iron Chef.

Impaired, Inarticulate, and Incoherent

Everyone is good at something, but no one is good at everything.

I'm a heavy supporter of that phrase. I remember when I'd play video games as a kid, and even nowadays, one of my favorite things was when you had the ability to create your own character, with a certain skill-set, and they'd have their strengths and weaknesses. You only had so many "points" with which to make your character good, so you put them into different categories, strength, agility, intelligence, charisma, which affected which aspects of the game you exceled at. I wish it was that easy in real life to see what you're good at and what you're not good at.

Lately I've been examining my own skill-set, and trying to focus on what it is I'm not so good at, and what I could get better at. I came to the conclusion that I'm not such a good conversationalist, I tend to think a lot before I say anything, so I naturally usually don't say much. It got me to thinking, what exactly sets a good talker apart from a not-so-good talker?

One of the disconcerting ideas I came upon is that people really don't have that much relevant things to talk about. Most of what we say to each other is filler, and really doesn't have any meaning in advancing a relationship. Sure if you have common interests, common classes, it helps, but to stick two people together that don't really have much in common makes it difficult for them to hold intelligent conversation.

I used to think that the only thing that set a good conversationist apart from a bad one was that a good one would make sure that there was always words flowing easily between two people. I realize that there are a lot more subtleties and delicate nuances to a good conversationist, knowing what to say, when to say it, when not to say it, how to say it, what tone, what order, how to start a conversation, and end a conversation, in addition to the huge variance of things I'm missing.

It's frustrating to know that there are so many ways in which you can improve, in such a small facet of life, and I think it relates to the saying that the more you learn, the less you realize you know. I'm certainly wishing I could have a +5 charisma right now, maybe I wouldn't be so tongue-tied talking to people then.

Missing the Moments as They Pass

Time, where did you go?
Why did you leave me here alone?

-- Chantal Kreviazuk's "Time"

I sit here alone in my apartment on a Saturday night, watching Auburn and Georgia play a heated college football game and going over my notes for TC 201, and the words of Chantal Kreviazuk keep going through my head. I've stated before that I don't mind being alone with my thoughts, and while thats mostly true, this type of situation seems a bit more difficult.

The fact of the matter is this is one of those nights you look down the road and regret later. As I've stated before I'm thankful for the group of friends I have on the most part; If they weren't to invite me along on everything I probably would be doing next to nothing, or worse, I would actually have to go out of my way to find a way to pass the time. The very thought is preposterous. Expecting me to make a conscious effort to find friends to hang out with? /sarcasm

Oh, there's no sarcasm tag? There really should be, that way people'd know that someone is being sarcastic online; It's pretty difficult to know whether or not someone is being sarcastic through written word, unless you understand the context well. Hmmm... Maybe that'll be my claim to fame. My mom has always been badgering me, trying to coerce me into creating the next great computer innovation, like the Google or the Napster guys.

Regardless, here's the story: Getting off work I didn't have many prospects of ways to pass the time for the night. It's a friend's birthday today, so a bunch of them went ice skating. Not exactly my cup of tea, so I passed. Next a group of friends said they were going to go catch a movie, Jarhead to be exact. I told them I'd pass on that too, since the cash is getting tight at this point, and plus, the movie looked horrible, even if it did have Donnie Darko himself in it. A third group of friends went to study at the library, which I also declined because I wasn't in the mood to study.

So instead, I come back to my place, roommate-less and all (he's had to go home every weekend this semester), and with nothing to do, settle down into a little pool of depression and bloggerism. I don't expect this depression to last long, as I usually don't let things like this get me down, but still, what should I take away from this? Maybe I need more friends, so I have more options on a Saturday night. Maybe I need to be less picky with what events I do and don't attend. Maybe I just need to learn how to create my own good time... which'd require effort. The best operative word I can think of here for that would be 'Ick'.

Sigh, looks like its going to be a long night of being able to relate to whiny white rockers talk about being lonely. The great irony here is that as I typed that, Ringside's "Tired of Being Sorry" just came on my winamp. Pick it up if you can, its a good song... even if it is the whiny lonely type. No one sees me tonight, but the silver moon.

I think I think too much

Xangas are to online journals what MTV is to music

I think everyone has those moments in their lives where their minds just keep rapidly switching between a lot of different things. Sometimes it's because they've got a lot going on in their lives, sometimes its because they make a bigger deal of certain things then they should. I think that I may be guilty of the latter, since I'm fairly certain it isn't the former. There are a lot of people who read too much into things, and pay too much attention to little details, and I think that I may be one of those crazies.

I remember a while back I was talking with some family friend CEO of some computer company in California (which is an interesting story in itself how we managed to get in contact with each other), and one of the things he kept mentioning was that in order to succeed in the "real world", you need what are called soft skills. This is operating on the logic that everyone comes into the working world with at least similar technical skills, or hard skills, for the job, whether they're programming skills, accounting skills, whatever. What seperates the good from the bad and the ugly is those other skills, like whether or not you're good at interacting with people, whether you can explain things well, and how much attention to detail you pay. Those are the soft skills.

While he wasn't directly responsible, he did bring up a valid point in that attention to detail is an admirable characteristic. I may have taken it too far though. I've always been slightly neurotic in the sense that I liked everything set up a specific certain way, or that I want a certain specific item. For example, I'm a bit of a neat freak, which seems to collide interestingly with my slightly more sloppy roommate (slightly being an understatement). Its created a few interesting little sitcom-ish moments, complete with the wierd disembodied laughing audience and all.

Regardless, I also have a specific way I want my computer set up, which programs are and aren't running, and I have my routine of turning on my computer down to a science (Hah, little pun, computer science kids), always going in the same order of programs that I open:

1. AOL Instant Messenger
2. Microsoft Outlook
3. Winamp
4. Mozilla Firefox

Every single time. Every single time. Always in that order. Sure these little neuroticisms don't seem like much, but they add up rather quickly, and it irks me, to say the least. Recently though, the focus of my excessive-compulsive habits has been item one in that list, namely AOL Instant Messenger. All sorts of little oddities punctuate my routine with the popular e-text client, but the point is that I've seemingly become obsessed with it.

I've been reading into it too much lately, thinking about it too much. Lets say I get on and after a few minutes no one's IM'd me, I start to panic. Did I do something wrong? No one likes me? I'm unapproachable? Or for example if I initiate the conversation and don't get a response, the same thoughts flash through my head. Am I annoying this person? Maybe they're in the middle of something important. The worst is leaving up an away message, which allows for people to IM you, even when you're not at your computer. Coming back after having been out for a few hours and seeing no messages for me while I'm away, that's a depressing situation in itself. Must be similar to how people felt when they came back and didn't have any answering machines. Ah answering machines, those were the days.

What's worse now though is that I've fallen under peer pressure to join a popular college e-community, Facebook. I'm holding out for now, though it feels like most of the people I know are on the site by this point. I think I realize that if I join it, I'll waste even more time with that then I already do on AIM. And that's a very real possibility, as close friends of mine who used to be considerably more productive are starting to lose their edge, all because they spend hours upon hours "writing on people's walls", looking at other's online photo-albums, and perusing their friends lists, when they should be studying for that exam twelve hours down the road. Take a computer junkie who already spends so much time doing "work" on his computer, in addition to the actual work I need to do, and mix in a dangerously contagious element like Facebook? You're cruising for a bruising brother.

I used to be adamantly against any sort of online social site/program, i.e. friendster, Naseeb, match.com, xangas, blogs, livejournals, Facebook, and to a certain degree I still am, which makes it seem all the more hypocritical that here I am writing in one. I hated the attention whore-ish tendencies that came with starting an online journal designed for viewing by others, something to scream out "lookit me! I'm deep and emotional too! lolol look at my cute pix!" and thought it was all a waste of time.

I see now though there's at least some merit to some online journals, particularly the ones that are concerned with more then just "I went to class today, then went to my friend's, then we partied." An analogy I put towards a friend a while back was that xangas, which often tend to end up like the above mentioned statement, are to online journals what MTV is to music. I'll leave it to whoever to interpret it, but it sounded appropriate. I got it from a Lewis Black stand-up a long time ago, though he was talking about KFC and chicken, not xangas.

I can see the merit in something like Facebook too, especially for those that excel socially, and need something a little more visual to be able to keep track of their expansive networks, and I can see that Facebook itself could make a powerful tool for meeting new people. I don't think I'm necessarily that desperate to meet new people yet, but who knows?

In the end, there's a strong possibility that I'm just trying to go against the grain, and refusing to buy into the hype. Trying to be different, just like everyone else. All I need now is a twenty dollar t-shirt from hot topic, ugly long rocker hair, and safety pins all over my jeans, and I'll really be sticking it to the man. God it's like High School all over again. Hardcore.

Home for the Holidays

I don't come home very often. In fact, this semester I've been home a grand total of three times. I know its not good, especially when I'm not even particularly busy now (though hopefully my busy-ness will pick up a little bit more now that I've got a job) and I hear it from my parents and friends all the time.

"Man, you only live an hour and a half away? If I was in your position I would be going home like every weekend" is a sentiment thats been thrown my way more than once. Its not particularly fair to those that care about me the most that I don't make a conscious effort to spend more time with them, but I realize that when I'm at home, my already unmotivated productivity level falls even lower.

Either way, this post is for those people, the ones that care about me the most. Coming home is a humbling experience for me, to say the least. Sure I have close friends at school, friends that'd do a helluva lot for me, but there's a difference between being loved by your friends, and being loved by your family.

That feeling you get when you walk in the door after the car ride home (which though some consider short, I still consider it a bit of a stretch, even after two and a half years) is something thats almost incomparable. Suddenly everyone in the household stops what they're doing, gets up, and comes down, all for you. Their brilliant smiles, and that general warm aura you get, you know that this must be home, that you've found somewhere you belong. That's what the elusive American Dream is for me, that is what I aspire to create, what I aspire to come back to every night.

Couple that with Eid and seeing so many old faces, and I'm walking on cloud nine right now. Sure there are problems waiting when I get back, and there are plenty of things wrong everywhere you look, but for now I'll leave with an old sentiment that seems to fit pretty well. Hah, I even threw in an inside joke from MSU right there, and like no one'll be the wiser.

Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one is watching.

-- Satchel Paige

That Slippery Slope

Coming to college as a first year undergraduate student was one of the more memorable experiences of my life. There's no need to run down the list of cliches, new beginnings, the ability to change oneself to be anything you want to be, etc. Hell, I even came to college complete with my own theme song:

Someday I'll be
Something much more
Cause I'm bigger than my body
Gives me credit for

Yes that's right, good ol' John Mayer and me took the trek up to State together for the first time. I had high hopes, in fact I still do, I'm not that much of a wiley veteran to the college scene that I've become that jaded... yet.

Regardless, there are some lessons that I learned (and am learning) at college the hard way. The one I'm struggling with right now is how everyone adapts to the college life differently.

It's repeatedly stressed that those first few weeks are the most important time, as that is when everyone is feeling unsettled, and everyone is looking to break into a routine, a set little group of people to spend time with, and a little piece of order in our chaotic college existences. This is more or less what happened to a guy I considered a real good friend of mine at the time.

We'll call him Hamza, since I don't know any Hamzas here. Hamza and I were real close friends in high school, we spent a lot of time together, and our parents were close family friends as well, which ensured that we got sent to the same little desi family gatherings. When it was discovered that both Hamza and I were going to attend Michigan State, both our parents were excited, expecting us two good muslim boys to be able to look out for each other. After all, what's a better bastion of Islam in a college setting then a close muslim friend to keep you in check right?

Not so much. Through a few different silly little circumstances, we ended up on opposite sides of campus. Anyone who's been here though knows the colossal amount of effort it requires to get from one side of campus to the other without a car. As a result him and I were subjected to very different sets of friends, which culminated in him and I accruing a very different set of experiences in those first few weeks/months of college life.

The reason I bring all this up is that after that small period of time, I was pretty upset that though him and I had grown up in such similar environments, with similar parents (as far as religiousness went), and both attended the same masjid regularly, that now him and I had been molded into such starkly contrasting characters.

Now I'm not saying that Hamza did a total switcheroo here, and I'm not trying to paste myself up as the shining example of morality, but it was fairly evident that our priorities were drastically different by this point.

What really shook up my Mountain Dew though (and I hate having my Mountain Dew shaken up) was how our attempts at being religious in high school almost seemed futile, all that time learning whats right and wrong, halal and haram, makrooh, zabiha, and all that jazz, if it got thrown out the window so abruptly.

How does one fall from grace so quickly, and what concerns me even more, is that had I been in the same situation as him, with the same group of people, would I have ended up the same way? Would I be out doing exactly what he was doing right now?

Though these events took place almost two years ago, the reason it comes back to me is through recent events. Obviously he didn't end up the way he is now as a sudden thing, it had to have been a gradual process, something you're weened into. One thing leads to another leads to another, it's a dangerously slippery slope, one that I've recently wondered if I began sliding down the same treacherous path.

I'm thankful that I'm not that stupidly vulnerable little freshman looking for a good time, and I'm thankful that I wasn't exposed to the same crowd that he had to put up with at the tender age of eighteen. As I stated earlier though, I'm by no means set in my ways and invulnerable to said tempations, I'm no pro at this. I'm smart enough to realize that I'm twenty and I'm stupid.

For that reason, along with the multitude of warnings I've been getting from those I consider close, I'm going to back off, and proceed with the utmost caution. They say it only takes one hit of certain drugs to get you addicted. I see no reason why it should be any different here.