1) I cannot process the fantasy genre. Keep your Harry Potters, your Narnian chronicles, your Lords of the Rings, your dragons and Khaleesis. At most I can digest werewolves and vampires of the Underworld category. Twilight is pushing it, but then that’s true for most.
2) My social self speaks with a British accent, while I talk in an American accent in my sleep.
3) I will always love balloons.
4) As a teenager I thought I had to like Jane Austen because we shared a birthday. And Beethoven as well, for the same reason. I do like some of Beethoven’s work though I never went past Chapter 4 of, “Pride and Prejudice.” I feel the same for movies based on her books. And Austenland. What’s that all about?
5) I didn’t realize I’m an all-out extrovert until a few years ago. And life has been better ever since.
6) I can wiggle my ears. I did it again.
7) Reading (books) is cool. I run out of conversation quickly with someone who doesn’t like to read.
8) Professional life brought the colour black into my wardrobe. I still think it’s not a colour. It’s vacuum, that needs to be filled with colour.
9) White can get pretty unimaginative as well, bordering on lazy. Which is why diamonds don’t do it for me. Rubies, yes. Diamonds, no.
10) Some of the best life advice has been given to me by strangers or children - both of whom speak without inhibition.
11) I’m on my 5th year without caffeine and soda. I miss neither.
12) Seeing my husband adore my parents and get adoration in return is the best feeling yet.
13) I’m almost like a guy with different compartments in my life, different apps and media for different purposes. I use Twitter to follow only those whom I want to hear more from. Instagram is to post what I like to capture and keep. Beme is for daily quirks. And Facebook is for all those whom I wouldn’t ever want to keep on a limited profile.
14) Of the few things that I picked up from my mother’s advice to me while growing up: I don’t have to take every phone call. People call me when they’re free. I can call them back when I am.
15) As much as I’d like to think of myself as a bibliomaniac, my heart turns to rock song lyrics when feeling utmost love. Urdu poetry when in awe. Seldom quotes from books.
16) I don’t follow the news at all. My Facebook feed shows nothing, it’s as blank and white as a new refrigerator.
17) I started being happier in my marriage when I stopped wondering what if. What if he went for the other girl? What if he has regrets? What if he dies? What if I die?
18) Forget saying love you when you mean it. How about saying it often, and meaning it each time. Same goes for thank you.
19) My journey to a fit life become more real when I realized I have zero aesthetic sense. The day I got over trying to “look” good because my heart was simply not in it, I started to feel tons better. And making better life choices.
20) I’ve known of my sugar addiction, and thought it to be a real thing long before talks of it triggering the same parts as cocaine surfaced. The struggle is real.
21) There’s a lean (vegan) beefcake in me dying to get out.
22) I can probably sing Montell Jordan’s, “This Is How We Do It” in my sleep.
23) Contrary to common conceptions about Pakistanis or South-East Asians, I think in English. I find myself translating from English to Urdu or Punjabi. I get my Urdu tenses and gender derivates all wrong, much to the delight of my husband and the chagrin of my mother.
24) I could once swear by the love professed in Untamed Heart, Before Sunrise and Pretty Woman. Somewhere along the line I broke my internal BS-detector switch and cannot understand how I fell for that. When I found my true love, I wanted to share these movies and turned the movies off within the first 10 minutes. Nevermore.
25) With selfie I don’t know which one is my good side. Or whether it even exists. All of me is good. Har har.
26) I think the entire Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s show, and Scientology deal was blown out of proportion. He puts in real work in his movies, and the rest is really none of my business.
27) I’ve never been clubbing. I tagged along to a gay bar once, but that’s another story.
28) I’ve been married for 7 years now, and never been proposed to. I like that it’s understood, and it’s done.
29) Once I had a New Year resolution to buy each month’s issue of Cosmopolitan for the coming year. I’ve made better resolutions since then.
30) I still have the Period Playlist that my husband put from, “No Strings Attached” on my iPod. I stand by the, “There’s a crime scene in my pants” analogy. Also, I keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding love.
31) I recently jointed the Toastmasters International club because the idea of speaking in public scared the bejesus out of me. 6 months in and they want me to speak less.
32) I immigrated to Canada from Pakistan last July with my husband. I’m still in awe of the move, and how far we’ve come.
33) I’ve sworn off Nutella because one of my nieces is allergic to hazelnut.
34) Until about a decade ago, I could watch horror movies through the cracks of my parted fingers over my face. Now I can’t even do that.
35) I’m not at all possessive about my home space or kitchen. My idea of being a good host is telling you where everything is kept once and then letting you figure it out.
36) Though I can’t understand a word of it, I listen to Carla Bruni’s songs on my commute when I want to take a break from the podcasts.
37) I think heartbreak sells, as does misery. Which is why Adele disappeared off the face of the media since she found love. That’s also why The Mindy Project got cancelled by Fox: nothing was really wrong with anyone on the show.
38) I may have watched 2 episodes of Friends, none of Seinfeld or Fraser. Tons of SNL.
39) The first thing that I want to do when I become a Canadian citizen is to travel without having to worry about applying for visas. First stop Jerusalem, then Jordan, then a month in Spain.
40) I’m left-handed when it comes to writing, though ambidextrous for almost everything else out of sheer observation I guess. Just that when I use a can opener, I get the top and the rim off. Something to do with the wrongs hands / order. I still can’t figure out which.
41) I spent the first 8 months of my marriage being miserable, because I thought I had to be a domestic goddess like my mother. My husband worked hard to have me unlearn that and I’m fine now.
42) I used to take days to pack, and even longer to unpack - because traveling with my parents in the summer meant going to destinations that I didn’t want to go to. Family, same family homes, same meals, same conversations. It was an acquired habit, and the first time I was traveling with my husband I packed and he panicked because I didn’t even realize I was crying! He packed for me that trip, unpacked too, and kept doing that until I learnt to make new associations with places I wanted to go to and people whom I wanted to see.
43) I pay random people compliments if I feel the urge to. People at airports who turned out to be superstars, elderly Sikh men on buses who start talking to me in Punjabi despite the headphones in my ears, women on trains whose outfits look great, or nail polish that I admire, or happy looking pregnant women. People talk to me a lot for the same reason I guess, and I like it.
44) I’m wary of cooing over children and babies around my mother because it makes her sad that I haven’t got any of my own. In Pakistan, almost everyone gets married to bear children and married couples become parents by the 10th month of their marriage. 2 years and people start suggesting OB-GYNs. I’m 32 years old, 7 years into my marriage and still taking my time. It’s a travesty by Pakistani standards.
45) I love kids, and my nieces and nephews are my favourite people to hang out with. I’m the cool aunt, and I know I’ll be a great mum when I choose to become one. Life is good.
46) I didn’t and I wouldn’t have ever dated anyone from my high school. Even then I knew that things would get too complicated with school work and love life mixing.
47) It’s so hard to find greeting cards that are not derogatory! It’s like, “happy birthday you old fart lol you rock even though you have one foot dangling in the grave jk i love you not really” - Can’t remember when this happened but they’re not uplifting anymore
48) If Jughead were a real person, nose-gloves would have been a thing and consequently my nose wouldn’t freeze off my face in winters.
49) I can’t aim to save my life, so bad that I even did miserably at pillow-fights as a child. My cousins would stand still right beside me just so I could get a whack or two across.
50) My extroversion is usually mistaken for flirtation and so I gauge how friendly I want to be with a person and whether they can handle it before really being myself.
51) I also wonder why so many people in their 20s and 30s now can’t seem to hook a guy or a girl. Here I am in a steady, happy relationship and people still get mixed signals from me when I don’t want them to get any. And then there are people who are not even looking to give off any signal or scent. How does that work?
52) "For what it's worth" must be the worst way
to start any sentence. You're saying it, it must be worth something for you to take out the time. If it really is that inadequate, maybe you shouldn't be saying it after all.
53) Phrases such as, "Chai tea" and "Naan bread" make me cringe. They're redundant. Chai is tea, naan is bread. There's a reason why no one says, "Coffee java" or, "Cornflakes cereal."
54) I like to take my time to walk in the rain if I'm not headed to work or have a laptop in my bag. Sans laptop in my work clothes headed home, I'll be the soaking wet, happy puppy in the rain.
55) I like how compared to NY, people in Vancouver complain less about work and the weather. Makes conversations much more pleasant.
56) 5 Seconds of Summer are the only talented "boy band," primarily because all of them play instruments instead of sashaying in synchrony with bouncing shoulders.
57) Even amongst girlfriends and cell phones, there's a very thin line between expression of love and sexting. For example, a reply to "Love you" would be, "love you too." Adding the I adds an entire new level of ownership to the feelings that the friend may not be able to commit to, making "I love you too" to sound downright creepy.
58) I was not born ready. I was born naked. And crying. Everything else after that was a choice.
59) Apply the revelation above to the times that I hear people are bound to do a certain thing, or react a certain way. And I stop myself from judging. Because I trained myself, beat myself to understand this when I have been down. Everyone has their own internal conflict.
60) My parents call me in Canada all the way from Pakistan to make restaurant reservations for them. Just today I called a Chinese restaurant before heading to work, and ordered a set menu for 13 people for my mom.
61) On the rare occasions that I get a sore throat, I like to sing all those songs on a lower register that I cannot manage on a regular day. Doesn't save the throat, though it does wonders for the ego.
62) I cried for the first time at an airport 1 week ago when my parents left. Even then I was having an outer body experience where I was analyzing the symptoms and thinking, "What the hell is happening?" Choked throat, hard to swallow, eyes welling up with tears and an incredulous mind.
63) Sometimes when I read an email from a good friend I find myself reading in their voice, and at their pace. Just how they would be speaking to me had they been right here.
64) The best way to have me not reply to an email, or greeting on any other medium is to start off with, "Where have you been?"
65) Am discovering a new relationship - friendship with my older brother. Being 10 years older than me, he usually took on the role of being the, 'Elder.' And then something happened - he clearly seems to have made the choice to be happy. And so I can be more of myself with him. Happy, silly and openly appreciative. That's the thing with happiness. It's so contagious.
66) Even as a teenager and young love I'd gone through the rites of breakups subconsciously - given away the gifts, memorabilia and all other reminders to friends or charity. Broken all ties, taken a step back even from mutual friends. And that made all the difference. I had better, more civilized breakups, and years later I can now maintain friendship with those mutual friends with the understanding that it's more wholesome now, and not at all about keeping tabs.
67) Another thing I've known since my first crush and consequent loves is that exes cannot be just friends. It's impossible to give love another chance with an ex looming in the picture in whichever form.
68) "After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished; need we say it was not love, just because it perished?" pretty much summed up how I gained closure in my relationships and was able to move on. Hail the early years attachment to poetry. Call it love, it didn't work out. Man up and move on.
69) I usually picture what unkempt women would look like in better attire and makeup. More than making it about them, I think it's a personal makeup challenge on how I would do their makeover, strictly in terms of colour.
70) I had this dream of my husband when I was just his good friend, hearing him talk about his then girlfriend. I dreamt he got a penthouse apartment, and he had his dad over, another good friend and myself and we were toasting with apple cider. 16 years later, we're getting our first home together and I feel that same rush.
71) Reading over my older blog post I realize I still look at roadkill while on the road and say a quick prayer and feel slightly devastated for some time after that.
72) I've always had more guy friends than girl friends because most guys come without the drama and need for constant planning, improving another person, or ad nauseam discussion. I can hang out with a guy, momentarily whine, bitch or complain and move on to greener pastures in a heartbeat. Small celebrations or pitfalls can come uninvited and without the concern of how it will impact the bigger picture. Good day, yay! Shit happens, let's watch a game.
73) Been meditating for regularly for about 10 months now, and I still learn something new about myself and my surroundings in the morning.
74) I listen to podcasts on the way to work, and some of them on double speed when I know the host speaks more slowly than the rate at which my brain can process the information. Double time for the same delicious thought in half the time.
75) I love it when Ryz watches a mindless action movie like a Jason Statham starrer. The guy (Statham) always delivers in terms of action, lack of plot and hitting that sweet spot of satisfaction. Sheer delight on Ryz's face on getting familiar entertainment. So worth it.
76) Maya Angelou said and penned some wonderful things. I will name my daughter Maya because she said, "This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before."
77) The guitar at the beginning of John Mayer's, "Neon" gets me every time. He strums magic.
