Closing Pandora's Box

It’s bee a very long time since you last wrote. You write very inspirative post,” said the General.

A few days ago, I decided to step outside into the garden and go looking for bugs. I didn’t get very far as the grass was too long; hugging my shins and almost reaching up to my knees in other places. And so, I sat down a few steps away from the kitchen door and watched. I sat there for over an hour. I saw life, I saw order, I saw determination, and I saw hope. Seeing and looking are two different things, but that’s a discussion for a different day. I was looking at weed filled grass but seeing something else. I’d like to share with you two photographs I took on my phone and you can tell me whether after looking you too can see that which I did.

Next to my leg on the right side was a dandelion and on the left some tiny pink flowers, through which were crawling many little insects. I watched them as they moved about on legs thinner than a single strand of my hair, gracefully scuttling about, almost as if playing hide and seek with me and my phone. But luckily (for me) there was one insect, so engrossed in what it was doing, it didn’t care about what I was doing, and so I took a picture of it.

It is normal for us to be so dazzled by surrounding beauty like of the flower, that we do not even notice the real beauty; the beauty of the effort put in by the miniscule insect to conquer the flower and reach its destination. In the same way in our lives it is those things, those people, that we take for granted who become like the insect in the picture above (do you see it?), that get forgotten in the presence of something seemingly more beautiful regardless of how temporary it is. Yet they are always there, trying and trying again, not giving up on what they believe, not giving up on you because that’s who they are and what they do. (Thank you, my dear insects friends).

They say, blow the dandelion away, make a wish and it’ll come true. And they wish for you to do this and that, so you give and give from the kind depths of your mortal heart, till there seems to be nothing more to give. You are left hanging and it takes so much strength. Hang in there my dear, have faith, grit your teeth together and remember the insect, unfazed by anything around it. The thing about being strong is that no-one asks how you are, or how you feel. So let me ask you now, ‘how are you today?’

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Photograph of insect climbing flower taken from personal photography available here.
Photograph of blown away dandelion taken from person photography available here.

[The Interview - Part 1]

There’ll be more questions going up soon, The General wasn’t going to let me off so easily! Have YOU ever wanted to ask me anything? If so, this is your chance. You can ask me any question you like (yes just the one) in a comment or email and I promise to answer it honestly, if I can, in the next interview post.

And with that I say Au Revior  and wish you all a very happy weekend.

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Title: Who are you – The Who

I’ve been wanting to write a long, thought-provoking and interesting post for quite some time and though I have many ideas swishing around in my head, I just can’t seem to get them out onto paper in a coherent manner. So I thought I’d request someone to guest blog for me.

Many of you have heard of The General. He is a very good friend of mine from university. Last week I asked him to do a guest post. “You can write about anything,” I said. “As long as it’s appropriate. And I promise to publish it.” Of all the topics in the world he could have chosen, he chose to write about me. This is what he had to say:

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This is how I think Nas’ Homunculus (a place in the brain that provides a picture of the body) interprets him. But ET is missing the curly eyelashes though.

This is an image from Tiny Tempeh's ‘Pass out’ video. Despite it being a stereo with water droplets vibrating down to the music being played full blast, it could also represent the up and downs of life. Sometimes you are totally clueless and ignore/neglect things/people closest to you when you shouldn’t, or sometimes you attempt to deal with the problem head on. Nas always preaches the latter and I respect him for it even though sometimes I don’t take his advice when I clearly should. He is always there for me and always a phone call or text away when I get bad news or even when I have good news. He is like my rock, and is one of the few people that I can classify as being a stable aspect in my life. I know he can be a bit weird at times, and maybe a bit annoying (to be honest I am describing myself but deflecting my insecurities onto him lol), but I like his attitude in which peoples negative opinions, despite being irritating, do not appear to affect him even a tiny bit. I know this sounds a bit cheesy but ‘I would walk a thousand miles if I could just see you’ (Vanessa Carlton) and even if he decided to go back to his homeland, I would drop everything and still go to visit him. I could describe Mr Nas by writing pages and pages, illustrating how awesome he is, but in order to be short and concise, I just wish our friendship lasts for as long as it can and withstands the monsoon floods and erosion that the previously known ‘East Pakistan’ is so used to. This may be the first and last blog post that I write so I hope this gives you guys an insight into how truly great Nas really is.

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I’d like to thank The General for these extremely kind words that I now have to live up to. As for the interview, we have had 2 sessions of questions and you shall be able to read all about it in the next post.

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Title: ET – Katy Perry
Picture 1 showing ET taken from here
Picture 2 showing water droplets on a stereo taken from here

It’s Friday morning afternoon, I have work to do but really can’t be bothered. I’m sitting here with The General talking about all sorts of random stuff. What? You wanna hear? Okay…here’s a collection of some of the things that have happened over the last week or so.

Friday 18^th

A week after my actual birthday we all decided to have a birthday lunch for me and another loveeeeeeely person. A joint birthday you could say. So I ordered my chicken and ate. It tasted alright at the time but by the evening however I was starting to feel a little off. Saturday morning, I woke and had to run to the toilet, an act I would be repeating all day. All of Saturday I had that weird feeling the pit of my stomach which comes just before you want to puke. After having dinner, I drank some water and that tipped the balance. Luckily I made it to the toilet in time to empty the contents of my stomach (through both ways). I was vomiting all of Saturday night, and bits of Sunday as well. . Bad times.

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Sunday 20^th

We were sitting down eating dinner, my siblings and I. My brother started singing:

Brother: *singing* In my head, I see you…¹
Sister: *singing* I hear you in my ears and you can’t sing…so shutup. And I know I can’t either, so I’ll shut up too.

My brother ended the whole incident by throwing a mattar (pea) at her.

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Monday 21^st

I was telling the General about just how bad I had been feeling over the weekend, and he replied by saying:

The General: Guys were doing you both ways and you just couldn’t handle it.

Then later, while talking of his own bad stomach near the end of the day, the following was said:

The General: I feel your pain down there..
Me: Ewww…dude I didn’t cause you any pain down there.

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Wednesday 23^rd

It was just after stem cell lectures, The General, Dummer (AKA Black Dick) and I were sitting in a base room doing very little.

Me: I know someone with 11 siblings.
Dummer: I know someone that had 89 kids.
Me: OMG! 89? No way?
General: No way!
Dummer: 8 or 9.
Me:  I thought you said 89 for a second, was gonna say. Now it makes more sense.
General: I know someone with 15.
Dummer: They must’ve been at it for a good 15 years, one after the other.
General: Yeah they were Bengali.
Dummer: The Bengali women just lay there and a fish comes along.
Me: Haha! What the hell? I know Bengalis and fish are quite intimate, but having babies with fish. *rolls eyes*
Dummer: Imagine if Bengalis made hentai, the fish would be the lead characters.

We don’t just talk  all rubbish, we discuss a bit of science as well. The conversation continued and ended up on AIDs:

Dummer: Man had sex with a monkey, that’s how AIDs came about.
General: It actually bit him. And it’s possible the rhesus strain of SIV is very similar to HIV.
Dummer: Sounds much cooler to say he had sex with it, and HIV can’t transfer orally.
General: It can, through the…
Dummer: Yeah but it’s really rare. That guy told us in yesterday’s lecture…Robin Shattock, I think he knows a lot more about HIV than any of us.
Me: AIDs is spread much more rapidly through mucosal surfaces such as the vagina, where dendritic cells pick up the virus and transfer them to lymph nodes.
Dummer: Say you were speaking to someone, how would you know they had HIV?
Me: At the end of this degree you can walk around with a HIV testing kit, if there is such a thing. And if someone wants to mug you, just be like ‘I have AIDs and am not afraid to use it’.
Dummer: And you squirt it in their mouth… If you get what I’m saying.
Me: Ah man that’s disgusting!

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Thursday 24^th

I happened to lose my house and locker keys on Wednesday and so was worried all day on Thursday. While walking past my locker at the end of the day, I saw my keys dangling there, still inside the lock. You’re allowed to say what an idiot. But only if you can do it with a Jamaican accent.

Rosaline: (text) Guests are here. Just roasted myself in the kitchen . x
Me: (text) Did you marinate first? Though to be honest, I’d prefer you raw. x

That sounds a lot worse than it’s meant to / was intended to. Am I allowed to explain what I actually meant when I said that? No? Hmph. Okay.

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Friday 25^th

The General talks about wives a lot and about how he would steal my wife, just before we were to get married. Maybe it’s to do with the fact I really annoy him about being gay and liking BMWs. If you don’t know what a BMW is, let me just tell you I’m not referring to cars. I was thinking about adding a picture of one for a second, but it’s not appropriate. How can I not think he’s gay when he says stuff like:

General: How do I find that happy and stress free person I used to be?
Me: I guess he’s still there, just sleeping. You just gotta wait for him to wake up.
General: Yeah sleeping with other guys!

And when he started on my future wife and marriage popped up he said:

General: I’ll bring you along when I buy my wedding saris…

Can I tell them what you do at weddings?

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Hope you all have a lovely, relaxing and fun weekend. What are your plans? I’m off to Paris . Jealous much? And I know I’m really behind on blog reading and comment-backing. Will get to that soon.

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Title: A song we used to sing in primary school assemblies.
¹In my head – Jason Derulo.
Picture 1 – Showing Tuileres Garden, Paris taken from here.

The two small words ‘I’m sorry’ can sometimes be extremely difficult to say. Maybe because they are potentially so powerful and sometimes also require one to swallow a massive chunk of pride. Apologising honestly can save relationships, mend friendships, burn out the fire of anger and it also has various health benefits. Those people that find it difficult to apologise have a serious flaw in their characters. The best apology is one in which a person realises their mistake, takes responsibility and feels regret for their actions and subsequently tries to do something to remedy the situation. There are times for apologising and others when actually you shouldn’t. Agree?

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The following message is for The General. Please excuse my rather scruffy and somewhat illegible handwriting; it was written in a bit of a hurry.

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I was recently talking to a friend of mine who told me that I had become distant and it seemed as if we were drifting apart. They weren’t too happy about it and that forced me to take a few minutes out from the daily grind and examine myself and what I have become. I wasn’t too happy about what I discovered.

In the final few paragraphs of ‘The Story’, I made the following promise, which I wish to reiterate, to all my friends:

With so many deaths close to home among family and friends recently, I realised just how much we take for granted; the friendships, the relationships and the other acquaintances. You can never know when such people may leave, go, or die. And when they do, you’re left wondering whether their last thoughts of you were full of happy memories or whether they left with no memories due to lack of contact or neglect on your behalf. Recently, I think I have been guilty of neglecting and that really scares me. I don't want to be remembered as the person that never remembered and so hereby promise to try even harder in that regard. If I ever fall short in that promise, forgive me and feel free to remind me. – From ‘For Your Story’.

I’d be the first to admit that I can be annoying, unpleasant, irritating and may even say some hurtful things unintentionally due to my short-sightedness at times. If I have ever said or done anything to you, that may have caused you distress, hurt; both physical and emotional and or sorrow, then I want to say I am truly sorry. 99.9% of the time, if I ever am guilty of doing such things it is totally unintentional. Intentional or unintentional, that doesn’t take away the hurt a person may have felt and for that reason I ask for your forgiveness. It may be that you cannot forgive me today, nor tomorrow, nor next year but that’s fine. I accept full responsibility for the flaws and dents in my character and I want you to know I really do regret many things.