Blood Testing!

Inspired by a very good friend of mine, I am writing this post.

Times have changed, we need to be aware of things. In this age of medical advancement, staying ignorant is causing your own destruction.

Some diseases are genetically inherited, meaning, they are transferred to the next generation through the genes, which carry all the information in them. Some of these genetically inherited diseases can be avoided by a very simple method: blood test!

Get a blood test done and you will know where you stand. Also get a blood test done of your partner-to-be to avoid problems which can be easily prevented.

As the saying goes "past is over, present cannot be changed but we have the power to change our future"

for more details on one particular genetically transferred disease-thalassemia, check out the following blog, its very informative!

www.ayesha.thalassemia.com

8th October 2005

Today, the third anniversary of that terrible day when millions lost their lives and possessions.
I having experienced it myself, dont have enough words to describe the horror.
There is still so much left to be done for the people who survived but lost so much.
May Allah grant the highest place in Paradise to the deceased and give the strength to go on to the people who survived and have lost everything.
Ameen.

Cooking Therapeutic?!

We all have problems, we all get stressed out at some point in our lives. Thanks to the inflation and the high cost of living, stress is rapidly becoming an integral part of our lives.I myself get stressed out very easily and have a very low stress threshold level. Over the years I've been trying to find ways that would let me channel my restless energy into something more productive rather than just stressing myself out.

I've discovered a couple of ways (I need to write a seperate post for the 'stress busters' and the 'energy channellers')but my most recent discovery is 'Cooking' :D

I've never been much of a kitchen person. I loved to eat and that is where it all ended, just eat thats it and never make the effort of putting something together.

It all started when we bought a new toaster oven, that is when I fell in love with baking and gradually I started whipping up some other dishes too and suddenly I discovered that cooking can actually be fun :D

Its therapuetic, I feel much better after making something if I'm really stressed out, as I cant sit still and I am filled with restless energy and cooking for me helps relieve the stress and the release all the restless energy. Once I have time enough, I am even planning to taking some cooking classes :P

For the people who face a similar situation, my suggestion would be 'Try cooking, it really helps!' :)

Eid Mubarak!

Its here again, the very eagerly awaited Eid!
Its time for Ramadan to end, and although we are sad to see it pass, Eid is what makes it a somewhat more bearable.
Eid, the time of joy, reunions, sweets and gifts and eidi ofcourse, who can forget that...:)
It is the Muslim festival observed by all the Muslims all over the world(even those who don't observe fasting in the Holy month of Ramadan)
For ladies, its new dresses, bangles and mehndi and for the men its the new dresses(they miss out on the fun of bangles and mehndi :P)
On the eid morning, the men go for the Eid prayer wearing their new dresses and perfume and the women set the table with the eid delicacies and then everyone goes around exchanging Eid greetings :)
However, during this time, we should not forget the less fortunate and the needy ones. Its their Eid too and we should try and make it a memorable one for them too.
Wishing all of you a very Happy Eid :)

"Seeing is believing"

We have very often heard the proverb ' seeing is believing' but unfortunately we dont really act on it. We cant really deny it, we all love to gossip about something or someone and thats not where all this ends, we even tend to believe it most of the times. However, we should never just believe on the word of mouth until we see it all by our own eyes.
However, there is also another scenario which kind of contradicts the above mentioned proverb and that is 'we see what we want to see' and because of this, one could get in alot of sticky situations.
Here is a simple solution: stay calm, stay neutral and try to assess the situation, and just be logical.
Behind everything there is a logic, so just go for the logic.
In the end, as they say, 'whatever happens, happens for good'. I dont know how true this statement is but I guess whatever happens, happens because it is supposed to happen and since we cannot stop or change whatever is supposed to happen, so I guess its just for the good!

Travelling in airplanes...

Flying for me is an ordeal!
I hate flying and I try to avoid it as much as I can, I blame it on my fear of heights, acrophobia, which might be the contributing factor to a large extent but I guess the memory of a turbulent flight is also one of the reasons.

I'd tried all the tactics that I could to keep myself occupied and take my mind off the fact that I am flying thousands of feet above the ground. Some of these tactics proved to be fruitful to some extent but there is one which I think can put you in a very awkward situation unless you don't mind being hooked into a long distance relationship with some stranger who lives on the other side of the world.

This happened somewhere in 2002, I was travelling(for the umpteenth time), with my mother(who usually dozes off during the flight) and we were seated on the window side. Unfortunately, for me this plane had 3 seats in each row on the window side and as I preferred the aisle one, I got the middle seat as we had been allotted the seats nearest the window.

This time I had thought of trying out my new tactic: striking up a conversation with a stranger just so that I had something to talk about until the ordeal got over.
Wondering who would be occupying the seat next to me and whether I would be able to have any intelligent conversation with him/her, I looked on hopefully at all the passengers coming in.

Finally, when I had started to lose hope of anyone even occupying the seat next to me for the whole flight, a middle aged, suit clad man walked in and hovered near the seat, tallied the seat number on his boarding pass with the ones stamped above the seats, opened the overhead luggage compartment, put his hand luggage in it, gave me a smile, pointed to the seat next to me and said, "That's where I am going to be sitting."
I gave him a courteous smile in return.

He was a middle aged man, dressed in a black suit, traveling from England to Pakistan via Dubai.
I didn't have to make the effort of starting a conversation, he took the burden of that off my shoulders, by himself striking up a conversation.
He seemed to be a very chatty sort of a person and talked on different topics. He complimented me a few times on various things but I let that pass unnoticed without reading anything much into their underlying meaning.

He told me that he was a divorce e, though he didn't mention that he was on the lookout for a bride.I sympathized with him about life and its trials and tribulations and how one should go on, being completely unaware of what he was reading into my words.

The time passed on, and the end of the flight showed me what an awkward position I'd gotten myself into. Just after the plane landed and taxied down the runway, he handed me his visiting card and told me, quite insistingly that I give him a call sometime and told me all the details of his stay and his whole itinerary. He also mentioned that if I wont be able to call him up for long, due to any reasons, I just call him and give him my number and he would call me back!
This was the time when I finally caught on with his insinuations and I was so shocked at what all he had assumed in the harmless conversation, that I had with him for the span of around 3 hours that I just stared back at him and blinked!
By this time the airplane had come to a stop and the doors had been opened, he took his hand luggage from the overhead compartment, told me how nice it was talking to me, hoping to hear from me soon, he walked away leaving me staring in his wake, completely bewildered....

Lesson learnt: NEVER talk much with your fellow passenger WITHOUT dropping the hints(even if they are false) about your imminent engagement or marriage, if you are single, that is and assuming that you are not looking to get involved with a stranger hailing from the other side of the world, or just a fling :)

Ramadan Kareem

As salamu alaikum,
Here's wishing everyone a very Happy Ramadan:)
We all should try and make the most of this Holy month, for ourselves and for the others.
May Allah forgive us all for all our sins and bring us onto the right path. Ameen