Closing Pandora's Box

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.

*****

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.

*****

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.

*****

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!

*****

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.

*****

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?

*****

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.

When I was young, about 13 or so, my dad brought me a telescope and microscope to explore both the micro-universe and the macro-universe. They were modest things; the telescope had a maximum zoom of 400x and the microscope’s zoom was 200x. I used to love standing out in the garden during the depths of the night, just staring up at the stars and following planes. As I grew older and astronomy no longer had a place in the physics curriculum my star gazing days were left behind. Instead, my eyes were turned away from the heavens and towards the universe that lies within us, and here I am today studying all about it. Recently, I saw a link to The sky at night on BBC Iplayer, which sent me hurtling back to the nights of stargazing. The sheer size, magnitude and beauty of the universe, here at home on earth and out beyond the reach of my little grey telescope is awe inspiring and extremely humbling. So I decided to collect some beautiful pictures from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the day website and share them with you. Each picture has an explanation, and caption which you can view by clicking on it. Enjoy!

You remember once I said smiles can be found any where if you look hard enough? Well there’s a smile in the beautiful photograph above. See if you can spot it.

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Title: Forever Young – Jay Z ft. Mr Hudson
All Photographs – Taken from http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
Holy Qur’an, Surah Al Mulk, Chapter 67 : Verse 4

Brother: You’re dizzzzzzy bruv!

Me: Errrr, do you even know what that means?

Brother: It’s like crazy or weird.

Me: *rolls eyes* I’m not crazy or weird. What you on?

Brother: YES you are! And now you’re annoyed. And you haven’t said a single nice thing to me this morning. You’re always depressed. And you never laugh except when you’re playing tik tik¹ or when you’re on your laptop talking to your girlfriend.

Me: Shut up you idiot! I don’t have a girlfriend. T_T

2^nd Jan 2011

*****

Occasions like the beginning of a new year or a birthday allow us to take out the measuring stick and see how much we have grown, see how much we changed over the last year, and determine where we are standing. It gives us an opportunity to blow the dust off the goals and resolutions we set ourselves at the beginning of the previous year and take a break from the daily grind of life and see where the world has taken us. Are we still standing at the cross-roads lost, with no direction, no purpose, or have we found a path, our path, leading us where we want to go?

Here are my resolutions for this new year (in no particular order), and you can ask me at the end of this year if I was able to fulfil any of them:

• Stop being so nice and yet overall be more nice to people (refer to conversation with little brother above). Don’t ask me to explain this one.
• Survive next semester and make time for people even when there is little time. I’ll show you my weekly timetable once uni is in full swing.
• Stop procrastinating Procrastinate less. I don’t think a 10,000 word dissertation can be written the night before. Maybe it can. I haven’t tried so don’t know. Hmm… Cutting down on the time wasting would help too.
• Smile more and actually be happy for at least 10 minutes a day. Maybe it’s time to start smiling lessons in front of the mirror.
• Improve my vocabulary, and add more long and weird jargon words to my lexicon. The longest word I know at the moment is probably ‘hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis’. SHUSH! it is a word and not 3 words with dashes in between.
• Write in my diary more. Yes I have a diary. Not a ‘Dear diary’ type diary, but a diary.
• Try not to forget any birthdays or anniversaries this year. I’ve started writing them in my year planner though I have forgotten a lot of the dates. Eeeek! Send me your dates people.
• Try and give library books back at the right time. Once I got a fine of £32.50. I could have bought 6 copies of that same book and still had money left over for some chicken and chips.
• Create a TV booking sheet, as to allow me to book my rightful place in front of the TV when Manchester United matches are on.
• Get a new job and somehow fit it around my already cramped weekly schedule.
• Rediscover the Nas I remember as a distant memory. Time to finally come out the closet I think.  NO Not THAT closet. I’ve never been in THAT closed. Will elaborate on this one later. Just remind me.
• Reference all my blog posts properly so that Furree Katt knows where my titles come from.
• Eat more badaam (almonds). UPDATED – 20 minutes after having initially posted.
• Learn to realise when food is hot and safe to eat. Just burnt my tongue AGAIN eating my fav daahl. UPDATED 2/01/11 @ 20.58.
• Remember to update this list, and actually stick to it.

We should not just celebrate the end of a year and the beginning of a new one, we should celebrate the end of every day knowing we made someone happy and start the next one hoping we can do it again...²

Last time I was at the bank waiting in the queue to pay a bill, I heard the following from an amazing little girl, who was no more than 9 or 10, talking to her friend and it brought a smile to my face:

This is my last cookie, and I’m only giving it to you because you’re my best friend. I hope you like it.

Would YOU share your last cookie?

Smile! And make those around you smile. :)

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Title: Machines – Biffy Clyro
¹ Tik Tik, noun. A game played by my brother and I in our bedroom upstairs with a shuttlecock and hardback books. Rules are similar to badminton. It was named as such by the mother. Injuries experienced are predominantly to do with the fingers.
² Quote from http://www.boardofwisdom.com/ which I read on another blog.

Me: Do animals feel pain?

Little Miss Sunshine (LMS): Yeah I guess so. You can see it when you cut off their arms or something. What about plants?

Me:  Hmm. Well they don’t really have a nervous system as such. So I don’t really see where the pain would register. And transpiration doesn’t count as tears.

LMS: Hehe. Lactation?

Me: What the hell? I just imagined a plant with boobs. Every 6 months they pop out boobs and just squirt milk everywhere.

LMS: I always get confused. What’s that word for crying? Lac..

Me: Lacrimation? It’s derived from the Latin word ‘lacrime’ meaning to cry, I think.

*****

Last weekend my mum went to Pakistan. Me, my dad and my younger brother went to drop her off at the airport. Just as we were leaving to come back home, the following conversation ensued between my brother and I:

Him: Who are all these ladies in the red skirts and hats?

Me: They’re the air hostesses, you know the ladies on the planes who bring you food and whatnot.

Him: I bet they get to fly a lot and see lots of places. Do they get free tickets?

Me: I guess so. It’s part of their job. But I’m not too sure.

Him:  When they have gone abroad with a flight, do they like get to see the place? Or are they kept under curfew and can’t leave the airport?

Me: That would really suck if they couldn’t leave the airport.

Him: You know what. If they get good pay, then I too wanna be an air woman

… (after a I started laughing) air man.

I know this is a post about happiness and smiles, but when I typed ‘air hostess’ into Google, some of the stuff that came up would’ve made some guys a bit too happy. So to save on the kleenex, I decided to use this picture. 8-). She is pretty.

*****

You may remember the post I wrote about happiness. If not you can read it by clicking here. There’s not much else I want to say but would like to share a photo with you. This was spotted by the ever so lovely Aam in labs last year while we were looking at blood slides down the microscope. The smile on her face was bigger than the one you see below, so I took a photo of it for her. It shows a smiley faced neutrophil (correct me if I’m wrong, I sucked at spotting things down microscopes).

Smiles can be found anywhere if you just look hard enough – (can I quote myself?)