PLEA

please read and sign:





www.petitiononline.com/lawslove/petition.html

teenage angst brigade

so i have been working for a while now, and i've been 'living' in bangkok for longer. i am unsure as to whether 'living' is the right word, given that my weekdays consist of commutes, work, a swim and dinner. by 9pm my eyes are burning out of their sockets in protest that they have been doing their job for far too long without a break, and my eyelids are as heavy as bags of sand.

i sleep, but often i do not sleep well. i am getting used to not being a spoilsport and having the air conditioner on (despite the fact that bangkok winters make karachi summers seem cool). i wake up a few times some days, many times other days. i am awake at 6am at the very latest, regardless of what day it is, because my body clock refuses to let me sleep in on the weekends.

needless to say, i feel very old.

it is not all bad though. even though i lack a social life, i am perfectly content being alone, so long as i am not feeling lonely (although there are moments of this too). my commuting means i take buses, trains, taxis, boats and tuk tuks on my own. my ass is not grabbed, no one calls out to me, or hoots at me. it is refreshing. i am independent. well, except that i am entirely dependant on the public transportation system.

i learn new things everyday. whether at the office, at school, or out on a street. the 'small town girl' in me, befriends strangers who work at bus stops and train stops, so i know those i see everyday, even if we may never be friends.

i have a friend from college here, who has been supportive and kind, and here for me the entire time. and i so grateful and appreciative. there are guardian angels everywhere. and they come in every shape, size and colour. believe it.

i enjoy teaching, in that i enjoy that it is 'conversational english' i teach, and so i get to talk to my students (of all ages), and have some hilarious (and some disturbing) encounters. whether they are gems, or diamonds in the rough, i am usually able to connect with most, and motivate some (with the limited english they understand, and the non-existent thai i speak).

my birthday is next month, and i am not looking forward to the age i turn, for i thought at 26, i'd have a book under my belt, enough money in the bank, and someone to come home to, but i have yet to achieve even one of these things. but i am also realizing that there's little planning you can do in life, and if you stick to the 'things to do' list you create for yourself, well, you miss all the other exciting adventures that may crop up, expected and unplanned, along the way.

and while i feel i am turning old, i think it is my ability to recall what it was like to be 13 and 16 and 18, which makes me a good teacher to the students i teach. i have not forgotten the turmoils that exist at that age, nor have i forgotten what the teenage angst brigade brings with it.

so maybe i am just getting older, and not necessarily old.

x marks the spot

inconspicuously,
quietly,
and out of the blue,
it is always in that fashion
that i will hear from you.
it is once i am healed,
satisfied,
and content,
that you slither back into my present.
but i am strong,
fierce,
and unbreakable, my dear dear x,
even in a moment of weakness,
come curse. hit hex.

stayin' alive

blogspot emailed to inform me that they would be deleting my blog since it has been so inactive recently. so here is a post to (hopefully) prevent the plug from being pulled on it.

some of the reasons why my blog has been inactive recently include the following:

- after the wonderful time i had in phuket, learning something new, meeting new people, and having an all round wonderful experience, i travelled to central thailand to try and find myself a job.

- i was initially supposed to be here for just a few days, since the job market is pretty massive, and english teachers are guaranteed jobs. however, it turns out i had to extend my stay by another few days, because of what i encountered.

- what i encountered was blatant racism. i was told on multiple occasions that i could not teach english, because i was not a native speaker, and this was determined based on the colour of my skin and the colour of my passport.

- however, i landed a few gigs my last day here, chose the people who were kindest to me, and who are allowing me to learn something new, and then headed back to browntown to renew my visa, so i could start my job asap.

- during this time i had the opportunity to visit istanbul with an old friend, and meet up with a friend from college there.

- needless to say, i had a blast, and some of my fondest memories to date, are linked to this trip.

- then i packed up my belongings, said a few goodbyes (i only had 72 hours or so), and am back in thailand working, working, working....

- and right now, i am sleepy. but i did it. i got out of the place that stifled me so very much. i did it. and so, here is to a new beginning. and my own personal quest for safety, new experiences, and hopefully, happiness.

perfect!

g-d i love graffiti!

turkish coffee cup readings

TEFL Certified!

you've got male

livin' po'

laundry!

this is what it looks like when you get your laundry back in thailand!

TEFL in Thailand

we're exhausted after a week of classes. can you tell?

Kelsey

Kelsey is in my TEFL program, and her rad tattoos deserve an entry. also, her boyfriend Paght (sp?) is a professional Muay Thai Boxer! SO COOL!

with love from...me!

view from the top

that's my language school from my balcony! i have no excuse for showing up late...

blister mania

yoga in bangkok with steph

monsoon season in thailand

try

i should have written this a while ago, but here goes: i am currently staying in Thailand. the reason i am here is simple: to take the TEFL course and gain international accreditation to teach English, and to try and find a job outside of pakistan.

it was two years ago that i left dublin for karachi knowing full well i did not want to move back. it took these last two years to get used to the oppression and frustration i felt on a daily basis; to turn on switches and never have electricity, and to turn on faucets and not have water. and yet, through each of these minor crises, i knew i was so fortunate and so privileged.

i started hating the city a little less, but i started hated the people a whole lot more. i tried fighting sexism and homophobia through my teaching, but i realized everyday the obstacles i faced. i did my best though, and now i am here, in the hopes of doing something new, and being somewhere different.

it scares me to know that despite this course, i may very well end up back in pakistan, because most employees do not hire people with pakistani passports, but i am optimistic. i am optimistic because i know one person who has pushed past this boundary, and i am optimistic because i will try my hardest.

i may not have white privilege on my side, but i am passionate, determined and hard working. and i believe the universe will take me where i need to be.

PLEASE

1st aug 2010

chocolate bunnies

fire & water

an Airblue aircraft crashed into the Margalla Hills in Islamabad this morning. over 150 people are dead. the pilot was asked to circle the area, for there was no room to land, and during this duration the contact tower lost contact with the pilot, and the plane crashed into the hills. turn on your tv set: black smoke bellows from amongst the trees. bodies burn, and the earth is on fire.

and while flames engulf love and lugagge in islamabad, waters drown people and places in karachi.

it has been a while since the monsoon rains hit karachi, but the skies have officially broken open, the cackling thunder reminding us that the break is getting bigger. in a city that is bursting at the seams, where many are homeless and hungry, it is no surprise the rain (despite being a sweet respite from the summer's heat for some) is a nuisance for many. there are always casualities in this sort of weather. whether is it because they drowned, were electrocuted or caved into their own "homes." when the streets flood, they cover up open manholes, and people fall in. manholes that hole, and swallow up, men and women and children.

someone i considered a friend, told me how she understands i have hurdles in my life, more than the average person, but that it is i who chooses to wallow in them. a plane crash, and a flooding are reminders to me that i am fortunate than most.

i was lucky (and that's all it was) that i did not need to be on that flight. i am fortunate (and that's all it is) that mine were the kind of parents who slogged their lives away so that i have shelter, and when it rains in my house, it is because the windows are leaking, and not because i have no windows. i have never felt rich, and parts of my family are constant reminders that i am not rich, i am just privileged...

and yet, i feel such disdain, such disgust and such utter repulsion in moments for this country.

i am aware of my privileges, i see them in effect everyday, but i have never understood how people who experience white privilege, who travel the world and see third world countries, who clutch a return ticket in their hands, and a passport that opens up the world to them, have the right to tell me they understand my hurdles.

i have struggled with ideas of white privilege since college. i find it ugly and upsetting that a murderer born in the US has freedoms that i, as a law-abiding citizen in Pakistan, never will.
i find it atrocious that my life and my life opportunities are limited because of where i was birthed. i find it repulsive that in job interviews people (in pakistan) ask me what is wonderful about being a woman in pakistan, not understanding that the question is a farce, the premise of it is entirely inaccurate and untrue.

i am not the people who crashed today. i am not a burning body. i am not the people who drowned yesterday. i am not a bloated carcass.

and for that i am grateful. really, truly, grateful.

but Weber's theory of relative deprivation comes to mind.

i live in a country where having parts of my body grabbed is common.

i live in a country where i knew what rape was, before i knew what college was.

i live in a country where strange men have said disgraceful, disrespectful and vile things to me, on the streets, in shops, and sometimes in the privacy of another's home.

i live in a country where i am not a person, not a face, but the only part of me that is ever really seen, is the part of me that is really never seen: my genitalia.

i live in a country where i struggle with my privileges because beggars line up at every traffic light begging, clawing, and jabbing like feral children, for whatever i might have.

i live in a country where as an educated woman, i have fewer privileges than an uneducated, illiterate, wife-beater of a man.

i live in a country where there is no power.

i live in a country where there is no power to generate power.

i live in a country where having a gun held to your head, and your cellphone and wallet taken, is as common as the lentils we eat.

i live in a country where there no consequences and no ramifications.

i live in a country where there are too many consequences and too many ramifications.

i live in a country where i can not walk down the street.

i live in a country where you will hear of 4 years olds who did walk down a street and ended up raped and dead in a vacant plot.

i live in a country where the waiter that serves me food at a restaurant, will probably never be
able to afford the meal i ordered.

i live in a country where in sex is a chore, and a painful and violent sex-life is standard.

i live in a country where bombs, guns and drones are more common than pens, pencils and markers.


i live in a country where i am perpetually not safe.
i live in a country where we are permanently not safe.
i live in a country where 'safe' is a thing of the past.

but i am alive. today. and just as (despite my grieving) i can never understand what went through the heads of those passengers, aboard that plane that burns ferociously, and just as i will (despite all my sympathy) never comprehend the last thoughts that run through a drowning persons mind, as they choke on rain water and seepage, please do not assume you will ever understand my struggles, or the toll they may take on my mind, spirit and body.

no two people experience tragedies the same way. no two battles are ever really the same. you will never understand another, but you can listen, and you can hear. and you can say, "i am here, with you, for you."

and while no two people are ever the same, i will argue that pakistani's are ridiculously resilient. make what you want of that. disease, destruction, poverty, injustice, intolerance...throw it all this way, and yet you have this ridiculously resilient population that keeps on keeping on.

towards what?
for what?

just as we all have our own battles, we all have our own goals.

some of which we desire to achieve despite the soaring of the flames, and the crashing of the waves.

where i am right now

"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly... that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar.

"But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion... these are the two things that govern us. And yet... "

And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream...

"I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal... to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives.

"We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also."

doing what we do best

i love these two people

don't stop

mehndi

officially, yours

napolean's attempt at chick lit!

one more time

girl, you'll be a woman soon

excerpt

the following is an excerpt from an email i wrote to a friend. i've decided to not alter my terrible sentence structure. a few words may be unfamiliar to a non-brown audience. please feel free to ask about them.

hey ******,

i don't think the uproar is because facebook is banned. well, at least not personally. i mean, yes it scares me to know i don't have 500 email addresses of my friends from college, but i think it's ridiculous because we already live in a country that's grossly unsafe. as a woman, my physical movements are very restricted - i can't walk down a street, or go walking to buy groceries, because of the horrid things that can be done, or the horrid stuff that has been done, and has been said to me. i mean, I've grown up getting my ass grabbed by strangers, and unable to do very much about it, so as someone whose physical freedoms are curbed, it does piss me off that the PK govt (that is not representative of who I am as a person), finds the need to restrict virtual freedoms too. and frankly I'm not a fan of forced activism - i never visited whatever blasphemous site, so i don't see how banning facebook for me makes sense, or is fair. not to mention, i don't really identify as Muslim. perhaps growing up half Parsi i didn't want to pick a side, or perhaps somewhere down the line i realized everyone really has their own religion, or at least their own version of it, so shoving it down someone's throat is barbaric. i don't care if this is the islamic republic - there's still that white space for minorities on our flag, and yet non muslims and lapsed muslims are all being forced the same fate. also, the PTA claimed only facebook would be blocked. the next day they extended that to youtube. now over 1000 websites have been blocked. this is ridiculous. the 'west' gets freedom of speech, and we get stifled and oppressed and given NO CHOICE, which is my main concern. how dare anyone decide you don't get to choose? especially when it comes to activism, religion and virtual spaces? i think this is all beyond outrageous, and extremely unnecessary. did you know even the internet on our phones is non-existent? seriously, dude. no wonder people run away from this country, anyone with half a brain, and the knowledge of free choice would not last very long here. i do NOT get how our parents do it. given how the pakistan they knew was one with discos, where women wore skirts and where there were no melas....

speaking of melas...yesterday i went to the autocross championship at seaview. and boy, was it a sausage fest. and i realized then and there, that i can deal with karachi never having any bijli, and i can with no water, and 42 degree heat, but i can not, can NOT, deal with sleaze. hooting, rubbing up against women on purpose, hurling insults - i can't STAND it. all because i don't have a penis? i don't get how anything that is pushed out of a vagina, can disrespect a vagina SO badly. despite sitting in the 'family' section, with a hoard of my male friends protecting me and surrounding me, 50 peoples' gazes were on me and not the cars. and i'm not saying that in this cocky way. it has nothing to do with my being attractive. as far as i'm concerned i'm pretty average looking, but because i have long hair and breasts that's reason enough for me to be gawked at, and for men to lick their lips and whisper at each other while they stare me down. SICK. on the one hand, i feel terrible for writing all this, given most of those people were poor, illiterate and women they knew probably never leave the home without being fully covered (fyi too was well covered), but still... no need to hurl insults, and say foul things. plus you don't need to be poor and illiterate to be a complete mela, tons of those in our socio-economic strata too...

closing time

friday 14th may 2010, saw the close of two years of my life. i will not be returning to the school i was teaching at since i moved back on 18th september 2008 (how we remember the dates that change our lives drastically).

i had considered leaving myself, what with the syllabus being the same year after year (and boring me sufficiently), but i had planned on leaving in december of this year. it turns out though, that teachers are not hired for just one semester, and so my idea of working 2010 away at this same institution, amounted to nothing.

why do i write about this?
because i find it interesting. and repulsive.

i find it interesting that i was told "rules are rules" and they are not bent or broken for anyone. yet, when teachers get pregnant (as several of them have in the 2 years alone that i have been there), they are entitled to the semester off - this is maternity leave. but when teachers desire a semester off to pursue a teacher training course (that was my plan), because they are serious about what they do, and struggling to be better at their careers, somehow that does not warrant time off (which is actually time spent learning), and somehow that is not justified.

let me see if i have this right: so if i choose to birth babies, i am entitled to a semester off (even though i knew full well i was getting myself pregnant, or i knew at the start of the year that i was pregnant), but if i choose to further my knowledge, and better my teaching skills, well then, tough luck.

i don't know why this shocks me. women are after all, just mere vessels for reproduction. a woman's most important job is to have a child, in fact, that's why she exists. women have no minds and no bodies of their own. they have one purpose and one purpose only: to churn out as many offspring as they possibly can. of course, what was i thinking? (i hope you picked up on the sarcasm)

come to think of it, i do know why this shocked me, and why it continues to shock me. i teach. well, i used to. i worked at a school. an institution that imparts knowledge and education. education which is synonymous with tolerance, justice, and equal rights (in my head). and yet, look at what is being practiced. where is the education in that? where is the justice?

i think things worked out for the best. i founded a society for the empowerment of women at this institution, i spoke of equality and respect with its members - i could never have lasted in an academic environment that subjugated women and rendered them mere uterus's.

plus, no one gets to make me feel bad for wanting more knowledge.
NO ONE.


PS. Eilis, i hope wherever you may be, you are at peace, and still following my entries. i think of you often.

Eilis

Dear Eilis,

I heard about your death yesterday. I received an email that informed me you had passed away. My heart hurt immediately, tears sprung to my eyes, but after those moments passed, the guilt and remorse set in.

Eilis, I will never forget your kindness. I will never forget our weekly lunches or dinners. You had said you were receiving unemployment benefits and you saw no better way to spend the money than to ensure I dined at some of the places I could otherwise not afford. You were so generous and kind.

I remember how I would fill you in on what was happening in class, and you and I would discuss class material. Even though you were made to leave the course, I did not miss out on your insightful comments and your probing questions, because I took the material to our meetings, and we happily deconstructed it all.

I remember the stories you'd tell me about the people you knew and had known in the past. I remember looking across the many different tables at you, intrigued and amazed and wanting to know more. You were so descriptive with your memories, I felt as if I too lived those moments. And no moment was too special or too private for you to share.

It's through our meetings and our constant emails that I knew more and more that you were a woman who was brilliant and had much to offer. Through your emails and your narration of encounters, I learnt that yours was not a spirit that could be broken. You were never broken Eilis.

I want you to know that your last email that you sent me a week ago apologizing for being rude to me a month or so ago, I meant to reply to. I was never mad at you Eilis. I was always happy to receive your emails, and always so confused as to why you were so proud of me. I do not think anyone has ever thought me as talented as you did. I want you to know I didn't take that for granted. You were the only person I'd send my short stories to. I knew you'd be honest, and yet helpful. You had so much faith in me Eilis, much more than I have ever had in myself. And now I worry I will never make anyone as proud again.

I want you to know when I received your apologetic email, I meant to respond, but I read it in the staffroom and I thought I'd reply when it was convenient for me. It was a selfish move to leave the email marked as unread. It was selfish of me in the last 3 weeks to not take time out to respond. But believe me Eilis, I was never mad at you. I knew you were not doing well. I knew the medication you were given often made you feel worse than better. I meant to respond, Eilis, and now the email in my inbox, still awaiting a response, eats away at me. I was lazy and selfish. I knew you were dealing with a lot, and yet I took my time. I took time you did not have.

Can you ever forgive me?

Will you ever know how grateful I was each time you took me out for lunch or dinner? Will you ever know how happy I was to know I made you proud? Will you ever know I appreciated you looking out for me in Dublin and Karachi? Will you ever know I have kept all your emails over the years, and cherished all the memories we made?

Can you ever forgive me Eilis?
Because I don't know if I can forgive myself.

graduation day

this means everything to me

it's that time of the year again...