the fine lines of war
I usually don't write about my personal and political beliefs on my blog as this is not a space for that. However, sometimes you are forced to raise your voice. Especially when war, conflict, and viol...
A mind that moves at a speed of light can be exciting or it can be exhausting. It yearns to fast forward to the future to create perfect scenarios or quickly rewind to the past to erase the imperfect ones. What it doesn't do is pause and be present. If you have one of those minds, most of the time you are not actually present in your body.
You k...
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Years ago we planted an olive tree in our garden. Olives are not native to our region (Punjab, Pakistan) and this particular baby refused to grow any. We waited for the olives for some years but when they didn't come we figured it was a mistake to plant it here. My mother even suggested that it be cut off but I didn't let her. The least it was doin...
What do you think of when you travel in a train or a bus? Of the meeting, you're getting late for? Of the family reunion, you're going to attend? Of a wedding that you so don't want to go to but your social standing depends upon it? Or do you take a moment and hop off the treadmill of "routine".
Whenever I ride a bus or a train I think of insign...
Ask anyone what their goal in life is and most of their answers will revolve around their job, family, friends or health. while all these things are means to an end that is happiness, you'll seldom hear people saying, "my goal in life is to be happy."
From childhood to adulthood, right until the end, our priorities change. We assign new meanings...
A while back I wrote about how traveling broke a lot of my mental barriers and helped me overcome my fears. However, as someone who has never been into fitness or working out, I was also physically challenged during my travel. The hardest being an 8-hour trek on the Warrie Circuit in Springbrook National Park, Gold Coast.
Springbrook is a heaven...
Remember textbooks? Files? Spiral folders? Notes? All those portable little bundles of information that didn't require you to squint at a screen or started beeping if you didn't plug them into a socket every few hours? Those were the days, man.
I never used to sit while studying up till high school. I used to grab my notes or a textbook and used...
We all have insecurities - those little nagging self-deprecating thoughts that just don’t seem to go away. Sometimes these thoughts become so overwhelming that they start to affect our daily lives. When that happens, people usually tend to find someone or something that tells them that it’s not so bad. When someone opens up to you about their i...
Today I made coffee at one of those tiny one-stop-shops by the fuel stations. What's so special about that? I had never done it before. Mostly because there aren't many coffee machines installed in public places back home. We mostly get by on black tea. But also because I was scared of doing something that I haven't done before and making a mistak...
In my last post, I talked about how Aussies care deeply about their environment. "Do the right thing" is the specific rhetoric adopted to promote environmental awareness and protection. Rightly so, if you do right by nature, nature does right by you. And guess what, you can use that your advantage.
I saw such rewards of nature in Springbrook, Go...
It's been exactly a month since I arrived in Australia and ditched the script of my everyday life. I've adjusted quite well and feel like I've always been here (much to my surprise). I didn't experience any culture shock or feel unwelcome either. Suffice it to say that I feel right at home and don't want to leave anytime soon.
During the past mo...