Activism

Dear bloggers,
Online activism isn't a waste of time. Through out the year I have spent doing this, I can state that online activism really works. Let us look at *ahem* my experience...
I have gained much from being online, checking orgs and meeting people who thrive to make a difference. I have learned so much about so much... I managed to learn how to shape steady and reasonable opinions. I am more aware on what is happening around the globe. I met people who are very motivating. We are changing the world. We are rocking the world. We are pushing each other forward since it is as much we can do for each other. We teach each other what we know. I believe that you do not need a crowd, you just need to believe that you can make it and you are able to make a difference. You can use one person who shares your views or let me say your desire to create a difference.
I hold a position in YFCI!! I have some space to voice my views. I have great friends who are very motivating.
And just recently I received 50$ for posting in a focus site. It was about digital media and I am the last person on this earth who has a clue on these things but we actually got along really well. And it was the perfect place to gain more information about it. It is nearly 20 rials and hey, it can serve me very well...
Let us never give up, the world may not be walking in the same path with us but it is not against us as well. Online activism really works! You should give it a try sometime...
Thank you everyone...

Shut Up

This song was dedicated to me... I am aware of the reason why, I'll share the lyrics with you, The song is 'Shut up' by Simple Plan:

There you go
You're always so right (that's pretty much me)
It's all a big show
its all about you
You think you know
What everyone needs
You always take time to criticize me
It seems like everyday
I make mistakes
I just can't get it right
It's like I'm the one You love to hate
But not today...
So shut up, shut up, shut up
Don't wanna hear it (I know you don't but I can't shut up)
Get out, get out, get out
Get out of my way
Step up, step up, step up
You'll never stop me
Nothing you say today
Is gonna bring me down
There you go
You never ask why
It's all a big lie
Whatever you do
You think your special
But I know and I know and I know and we know
That you're not
You're always there to point out my mistakes
And shove them in my face
It's like I'm the one you love to hate
But not today
So shut up, shut up, shut up
Don't wanna hear it
Get out, get out, get out
Get out of my way
Step up, step up, step up
You'll never stop me
Nothing you say today
Is gonna bring me down( So Shut up, shut up, shut up)Is gonna bring me down(Shut up, shut up, shut up)
You'll never bring me down
Don't tell me who I should be
And don't try to tell me what's right for me
Don't tell me what
I should do
I don't want to waste my time
I'll watch you fade away
So shut up, shut up, shut up
Don't wanna hear it
Get out, get out, get out
Get out of my way
Step up, step up, step up
You'll never stop me
Nothing you say today
Is gonna bring me down

I know it's alot like me, but not all of it.... Most of it at least! I am trying to change you know!

Meeeee

I do understand the fact that I am a dorky/goofy person, I am in peace with myself and have accepted this fact and embraced it. However what makes it easier is that I certianly do not look so. I look perfectly like a not-goofy person. I care about the way I look, not too much, but yes I am not ashamed to admit that I stand in front of the mirror for quite some time. The point is that my personality wins over my looks and so you would really see what a goofy person I am, and what adds to that is my clumsiness, my vey very short memory, I remember times when we gather the dishes I'd head to the bathroom and then realize where I am going and hurry back to the kitchen and a million other incidents where my family can't help wondering how much of a poor memory a person can have. Now let me get to the point, am I uncool?? I don't believe such traits imply that I am uncool... There's this fast food restaurant called 'Hardee's' or however they spell it. Anyways they have this new meal on which they were advertising and I didn't realize before that coolness was a vital trait in a person. The ad said 'Are you cool enough?' and it showed a "cool" person who ordered it and they gave it to him. Next came the classical looking "uncool nerd with thick glasses" and so they didn't give it to him because he was simply not cool enough to taste the sandwich. I'll spare you the details of the ad but it had me thinking on being "cool" to be able to fit in anywhere. We went to that restaurant and I ordered the meal and well, it's not that they cared for being cool or not. I dare say it was just this idea that this person who works for the company came up with to sell. Now I am perfectly cool with me being cool or uncool, I don't mind either because I hate to be classified under one word. I do feel we need to change our perspectives for what would make an appealing person(ality). I do have a future and so it might not be spent in goofiness even though there would be no objection from my side. I will never be "cool" in the well known standards.I do face a problem though. I imagine if my friends would describe me in one word most of them would say "nice" or "talkative" and the thing is, you can be a thousand more other things but this is what most people would do, you fall into one category and everything else is bypassed. I can not imagine a perfect character, I do love the way some writers excell in creating characters with the perfect flaws ever to be found. I would say no one have these so-called perfect flaws but we can try as much as we can to make our flaws more bearable... On second thoughts just let your flaws be.The comforting part of all this is that I am aware of it and I like the categories I would fall into, well at least most of them.

When the car got nearer and nearer from Muscat I didn't know what to expect, I thought I'd see everything damaged or all would be just the same (weird combination I know) But a part of the road wasn't there. I don't know how to put it really, it just seemed to have fallen. This was the first visible affect of the cyclone to me. As we proceeded in our journey I saw a few other damages but nothing to be mentioned. I thought it more or less damaged than what I had in mind. My sister said that most of the damage was in places far from where we are living now, I may not see what has been most affected. I just think that it is a shame that such a thing would happen, they have spent much time developing Muscat and that this would take this all down in less that a day. I do believe that they shall make it even better than it was and erase any visible damages. People have moved on and they are carrying on with their lives, which makes everything easier.We went bowling yesterday and I played with a friend and I won over him. I even recall the score.... 87-84! I used to think that I sucked at bowling. Don't we suprise ourselves? I refused another match since I wanted this day to be memorable. Being here is good for a change since if I was at home, I would simply be wasting all (most) of my time. I am getting to watch more tv and read more. I haven't been watching a lot of tv in a while and it somehow feels good to watch it with all it's silliness. Now maybe you'd think it is strange what I am writing, since watching tv is somehow a waste of time, I mean it is not like I am watching educational shows. But the point is that it is far less considered as a waste of time than what I would be doing if I wasn't here.I've been watching 'American Idol' the 6th season and it has just started. Yes, it has ended but you see they are a little late showing such things in here. Anyways it was way too much fun since most of the contestants truly believed they had such a great voice but while all they had was a voice that merely hurts your ears. Simon was the one who shattered their dreams. Was he being honest? Or rude? Because he kept saying 'I am not being rude, but....' I sensed that someone needed to tell those people the turth, could it be done in a more kind way? Or the turth should come naked? I recall this quote: "Truth is like ice water, it shocks you when it hitts you but no one has ever died from it" I don't know but people's feelings should be at least considered.The arabic version of this show is less hilarious, it is not because we have more talented people, but well... These talent shows for singing makes us know more about singing, I always wonder if they would take me in if I ever went. You'd be suprised if you heard me singing which I am sure you have heard me sing one time or another because 'Music is my life' Naaah, it's because I am always humming a song or another. I am begining to feel a little dizzy so I'll try to find something else to occupy my time than typing.

Summer Randomness!

I am feeling somehow high. Well not as in high on some sort of drug! But as in really happy! Why does it happen that a day can really go so badly but then be a great day. I remember being so upset one day and buying the books I was longing to get in the same day as well!! Is it how days work?! You get to have the most marvelous -I just checked the dictionary, I spelled that correctly!!!!- day while going through bad moments! I do not mind them, but I just want them to be so kind as to not let me shed a tear. I have unfinished business to do -I always want to say that line, it makes me feel like I'm some sort of this important person, which I already am but hey I just like saying it- I still have a list of things to do but I managed to cut off some of them as I did some of those tasks gracefully.

I must admit that having people travel for Summer makes me eager to leave this place. London, Peru, Malaysia, Jordan, Egypt are the destinations of my friends.
I want to go to Jordan because I feel like eating 'mansaf', falafel, a potato sandwich! YUM!! I want to eat their food so bad... Don't worry I will not go on blabbering on the places I wish I was instead of this room. I like where I am, it is somehow my comfort zone.

More randomness coming your way: We are explaining what a lip gloss is to a guy who doesn't know what it means! 'Lip gloss universal' quoting Lil Mama!
I just wonder why would anyone in their complete senses think that being skinny means being beautiful, hold on I've mentioned that earlier? I need some rest then, My brain is obviously over stressed as the clock announced the start of a brand new day. Yes, little Miss sunshine is here...And how on earth would I move from talking of lip gloss to talking of being skinny??

I would like to thank you for bearing such randomness and more over, should I say incomplete, repeated thoughts? Now that was a nice way to put it... Good Night

Hit the beach!

Summer holiday has started and well, I can not really say that I am having the time of my life. I imagine I will be having a good time pretty soon. At the moment all I am doing is read 'Emma' and waste time online besides the daily routine of stuffing my stomach, sleeping and talking! Today was definitely not the best day of my life, but I am able to look at the bright side, I read Amy's new story which was fabulous! And what made my day was that I was backed up on the 'Hinduism' thread! He is now twisting his questions to show that what I believe in is 'groundless'. I didn't say anything in this regard. I knew what it felt like to be accused of that. Now he said that he thinks I should talk on my behalf and that PrettierPrincess probably shouldn't have posted to back me up! I wish to yell, talk aggressively, but it is not worth it. I don't lose my temper this easily and I do believe that being calm is the best way to behave! It should be fun.
Anyways at the moment I am chatting with my friend who is in barcelona while I am in Nizwa. Life is unfair! But tomorrow I am leaving for Muscat to catch 'Ocean's 13' and enjoy the sight of George Clooney.
What I am trying to accomplish through this vacation is just have a good time without wasting it. So plans are as follows:
Read as much, Learn as much, Go take a course!! Maybe some more but these are the main targets!
I hope everyine enjoys their summer! This is the first post while I'm on vacation and so I'll be keeping you updated on what I am up to!

Changing...?

I have decided to the raise the level, of what you may ask? I am unsure, myself! I just have had it with being.... Me?? I have to confess, yes to some point! Don't get me wrong, I love being me! But as everyone else I have some flaws that I can help them, I mean I can do something about them!

I am trying for sometime now, I am trying to be a more improved me. And guess what? I, for once, feel that forces of nature are helping me! Listen to me, I am not blabbering as much nowadays! I am trying to care a bit more about what is being said! I think I spent too much time talking and thinking about things to say, while I could have been listening!
Is this something that I am deciding what the next school year will be like? Or even close my summer-vacation? I certainly hope not! There has been too much of these and I can no longer bear any more of them, I never for some reason make any happen! I just hope it is for real this time, I think it might be! I don't believe it is one of these moments where my positive side rises, but yes, I am very optimistic at the moment! I hope I am not complaining!
Being a complainer doesn't mean being a pessimist, someone assumed other wise on VOY just today and I do not believe so! We often are misunderstood... Being a complainer does have some accessories with it, like whining and nagging but I do not think we can say that every complainer has those traits! And some have pessimism float along, not all! I am a girl but that doesn't mean I have to be: fashionable, mushy, etc. I can not put it as the naked writer does, so take a minute and check this: http://thenakedwriter.blogspot.com/2007/05/trans.html
Oh and somehow VOY came up in this post so I might as well update you on what is happening there... I am learning about Hinduism, tomorrow it is supposed to be on the traditional houses of Hinduism... I'm scared! The one who is teaching me knows too much!

My words couldn't help explaining another thing I am determinant to do, learn more about things which school can be the last place to turn to, to know more about! It is to care more, I know you would probably think... How can I care more? I already have enough of that feeling but let me tell you that I know myself! I can use some more caring about people, including you who are taking minutes and reading this.. Maybe because I asked you to or you simply remembered this confused young lady who updates her blog from time to time and wanted to know what she is up to! Anyway made you read this is much appreciated!
Do take care, now there is one last thing! I am going through a weird phase, there's this urge to make this a comment less post to accompany the one before and not make that post weird among it's fellow posts?! No you can comment... I have to get over that phase!
I can say as much, good night!

A little place inside my head! Please after entering do not leave a foot print!

They are saying that we will be hit by a cyclone which will be indeed very big. Many measures have taken place and they even started evacuating some places! We are given two days off. Which means four days off! Since tomorrow is off, Thursday and Friday are already weekend and Saturday is also a day off! I mean will it be this long? We are not living on the coast though, which means we will not be facing grave dangers!
'This country have hardly been through such a thing, we are making all proper arrangements for people in the worst scenarios... But please people do not be alarmed'
How do they expect us not to be alarmed after such statements published? We have all the right to be alarmed, you do not tell people how big this thing is and then tyring to calm us down! I am not much afraid though, it is good for a change to have some rain but I do hope no one gets affected by this.

Such things always leave me in utter confusion! What have we done to have this happening? Or is it for some other reason which is not for us to comprehend? I do believe it can be both! Maybe we have done something to deserve such a thing!! Which leads me to my next wondering: Is this a bliss or a curse? To answer the last question would be making it only an obvious hint to answer the previous question, have we done something, it is too much for me!
I must say that certain things attract me just for the sake of them being unanswerable! Or I can say it in another way: I love things which no answer can make sense to, no sentence can ever be the respond to, no thought can be reasonable to all!
Let me make it clearer, take for an example the controversial questioning of God's existence! Now who is the one that can convince all humans that God truly exists/doesn't exist! It is such questions and wonders that I find myself very much drawn to! I like to call them 'Internal Questions'
You may not find the same feelings rush through your soul/heat/brain/or whatever part of your body that feels emotions! It is unexpressable in words! It is only felt. I do hope these questions remain unanswered till a day comes which all questions will be revealed! Till such a day comes I will be looking for more questions and if I can I will do my best to have them answered.
At last let me apologize for making this a comment-less post but I have no other option! This contains internal questions which I must not hear your answers! I must leave this to be for myself only!
These are thoughts on which I have quite a hard time thinking about them, you must not enter that zone! It is my own!

A victim of circumstances or a victim of apathy???

"It is perhaps every teenagers dream to holiday in bali and shop in dubai. It is perhaps every software engineer's routine to party in places where a glass of vodka costs more than three meals for an entire family. It is perhaps every 17 year old boy's hobby to go to a shopping mall, look at beautifull women and thank God for making life so much more worthwhile. It is perhaps quite okay for a father to buy his son a Mitsubushi Pajero for passing 10th grade, while on the other hand money is being saved by cutting down on the salary of the housemaid. But while we are engrossed in our most serious ventures, we should perhaps step out of our own shoes and see those things that we ought to see, to hear those things that we ought to hear, to stay silent and think about what we really have to speak about.I am writing here fully aware of the cruel ironies and sorrowfull contradictions in the world today. We live in a society that plays on a see saw not caring enough to see if the person on the other end is heavy enough to balance the apparatus. We live in a not so condusive atomosphere where luxuries are no longer enough but instead an ambition to go beyond is visible. Yet on the other lie people who are troubled by the voice within, who cry and scream on the inside watching a poor soul's hope lies on the edge of a cliff and yet cant do anything to help.Death represents to most of us that evil force that will take us away from everything and everyone we love and cherish while for her it is perhaps a source of liberation, freedom from responsibilities that burden her back and strike her down, end of a punishment called lifeWhile we fight our battles against boredom, against mediocrity and against simplicity as opposed to vulgar extravagance, she fights a battle for food and shelter she fights a drunken husband and for good education which her children rightly deserve. While a kitchen knife to us, represents all those times we have hurt ourselves trying to chop vegetables, it reminds her of the day she came to her employers home shocked and not knowing where to go with the knife thrust into her back, by the very person who was supposed to love and protect her.While a good convent school represents to us affordable means of good education and money worth spending on, for her it represents an agent of financial burden and yet at the same time the right place for her brilliant daughter. It represents a situation where it is less food today and more money tomorrow or enough food today and a hopeless future tomorrow.It is true that she and I are from different sides of society. Yet her greatness and resilience is beyond anything I have ever seen.I stand here with the hope that her honesty is not rewarded with misery and sorrow; that her sincerity is not returned with starvation; that her nobility and integrity doesnt bring a drunken mad man whose only motivation is alchohol.Yet I also realise that hope isnt enough and neither is Rs.4000/- as fees for 10th grade. Gratitude has lost is meaning and concern signifies guilt and frustration. I stand here at the face of a society that is over eating and obese and yet refuses to share, at a government that continuously fights over our language and yet doesnt listen to the people who speak that language.I am also aware that words are not enough. Heck they may even discredit me as the person who only speaks and doesnt actually do anything. Yet it is with the hope that someone will listen and someone will listen good that I am here. I am here not telling a story about a individual but about a host of maids in Bangalore who fight drunken husbands, increasing costs of education and narrow minded employers and the apathy of society. This is the story of a housemaid whose drunken husband is absconding at the time of paying fees for the daughter’s term at school. This is the story of the housemaid whose drunker husband has drained her of all the money she needs for a cataract operation. This is the story of those millions of people who clean the houses of people they don’t know, ensure the family’s good health by tidying up the place and are yet ill treated as outcastes and cheap labour.I stand here lost in a different way thinking and pondering and still not able to understand anything. I would prefer my intellect to stay idle than to live with the frustration that I wasnt able to figure out another way, my eyes would rather prefer to be blind than see a soul lose its hope near the cliff and still not be able to do anything, my ears would prefer to be deaf than listen to the cries of those who need help and still feel helpless, my mouth would rather prefer to be dumb than say things and not be able to do anything promised. Justice and equity seem more like concepts on paper than operative words in today's world. They say that God is like a lawyer, i.e both are approached only when people can’t think of a way out and I would say I am also such a stereotype.To all those teenagers who own pajeros for passing 10th grade, who party at “The Capitol” spending more on booze than people could afford on proper food, I would like to say that a world exists parallel to ours and it is suffocating and it cries for help. It struggles to keep its residents alive and begs for someone to intervene. If you are a person to whom things beyond luxuries are a necessity, for whom comforts are more of a right than a privilege and for whom drugs and cigarettes are worth buying, then it is only fair that I wish you the best of luck.But as V puts it in his speech in V for Vendetta, if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel and if you seek as I seek, then please post this article on your blogs and spread this to every blogger you know for more the speakers, more will be listeners."

PS: This is written by Ash and since I like to consider myself as a concerned citizen of the world... Here it is! :D
Check it out: http://ashinbangalore.blogspot.com/2007/05/victim-of-circumstances-or-victim-of.html