# 85 The family wedding and my family and other animals- Part II

OK, I am finally continuing this post , when I left off we were off to the event in an entourage of cars, me with my parents and the cougars maid, while she was off gallivanting with an unwilling guy, one-third her age.

So we were going in the car, all cars moving in file, being careful not lose sight of the cars in front. ( For some reason, even though the venue was at a really well-known place, no one seemed to know where it ACTUALLY was).And of course, as expected, we kept losing sight of cars on the way and kept having to stop at random sides of roads waiting for the others to catch up. It always, always, ended up being on some lonely wayside where I would have to keep looking around in fear of  the next 'mobile snatcher' who would turn up and take my precious ( and recently purchased) blackberry away from me.  :O. So I put it on silent and hid it under the seat in front, (which was a little stupid cause  it kept vibrating with  notifications as I was incessantly texting Furree Katt, and my other cousins with updates as to what was going on. ( I was very bored).


Ok, so we finally reached the venue ( which was actually some navy museum) and it turns out that out of the 7,893 cars that had come along together, only THREE were going to be allowed inside. So we all had to park faaaaar away from the actual gate and then walk all the way inside. Even from inside the gate, we had to cross a small park, an effin DRAW BRIDGE ( yes, it was an actual draw bridge, wobbly and all, with ravines below!! - well, maybe not ravines, more like 3 feet of water, but still, it was pretty dramatic) and then another mud laden path before we got the actual marquee.

Everyone was complaining about the long walk, and was also wondering that how would the bride with her over-the-top heavy clothes and make up that Pakistani brides tend to have.Anyway, we started the walk FINALLY after standing in a group for 10 minutes, discussing how long and annoying the walk was going to be. My mum ( who hates exercise) was I think most annoyed by the prospect of having to walk the quarter-kilometer or so went like this:

Me: Okay, come on mum, lets go
Mum: (after taking three steps) Uff! What a long walk!


At long last, after ruining my precious three-inch golden heels in the mud, we entered the marquee, and everyone ran to get to the table which was nearest to the food arrangement/pedestal fans/opening in the tent so that we could get some fresh air.


Finally all seated, I went back to my observing of the events and people around me, once more making notes for my blog for all you precious readers to read.

[ Ok, I am getting a little tired now and am tempted to break this point into yet another part and make in into a complete wedding 'trilogy' but I don't know if is going to be such a good idea or not,it's actually lunch time at work and the India-Australia match is going on, whoever wins will play us in the semi-finals and no one is sure who we rather be up against. Long story short, everyone is watching the match in the employee lounge, no one is working, and I am getting distracted from this blog post for the moment]

# 84- The family wedding and my family and other animals- Part I

Confusing title, I know, but anyway I thought I'd share some random funny things that happened a relatives wedding I attended a few days ago. As we all know every wedding has their own funny stories, every family has their 'from Mars' relative, but somehow I feel that we Pakistanis really take the (wedding) cake.

The wedding was of my first cousins son, who is actually my nephew, but is actually older than me cause his grandma, who is my dads sister is at least fifteen years older than him, hence my cousin is older and me and so is her son. Confused? So am I, and that is what my extended family is like.

Anyway, so since we were from the 'boys' side of the family and hence the 'baaraat' or 'wedding party' as you could call we we all had to first assemble at the boys house and then leave together in an entourage of cars to the wedding venue where the girls family would be, waiting for our 'istakbaal'  ( welcome).

So my aunt, ( the boys grandmother) tells my dad, ' we have to assemble really early, be at my house at a quarter to eight!! SHARP!"... My dad is like 'oh sure sure OK'. This I found out when I came home from work at 6:30 pm. My Dad was like

Dad: Somkey!!! ( thats's not my real name,duh, but anyway) Smokey. hurry up and get ready we have to leave in an hour!

Me: What? What? Where why? I thought we were going to the wedding?!

Dad: We ARE going to the wedding now hurry up!

Me: Dad?.....It's 6:30, what kind of wedding in Pakistan starts at 7:30?

Dad: It's not starting at 7:30, we need to be at your aunts place by 7:45 and then leave at 8 for the wedding venue

Me: Dad, please, for heavens sake, what wedding on earth starts at 8? Please, let's not leave before 10

Dad: Beta, are you crazy? No no no. 7:45 MAX we leave now hurry hurry hurry hurry.

At this point my dad just kept on saying 'Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry', until I was like 'okay

Okay okaaaay’

Anyway, so I got ready, and tried to delay our leaving as much as possible and still did not manage to postpone the eventual till 7:55 when we stormed out the door with my dad grumbling about how late we have already gotten and how he was sure that everyone must be impatiently waiting for us. *eyeroll*

So we get there at like, 8:15 and the whole place is silent, quiet. Not a sound in sight ( haha not exactly sound in sight, but you get the picture.

Mom: What? Have they left without us?

Me: No,way. Haha I bet they are still in their pajamas

Dad: No, beta please, it’s already so late…let’s go see.

Aaaand when the front door opened we were greeted by the grooms bro…in his pajamas

Dad: Son, you’re not ready yet?

Grooms Bro: No, Uncle, I’m just getting ready, It’s only 8

Dad: Your grandma told me to be here at 7:30!

Grooms Brother: Hehhe, Uncle, come on, you know everyone here operates 2 hours late when weddings are concerned.

Here let me pause in my story to tell me you the mechanics of  a Pakistani wedding,

Everything goes by PWST (Paki Wedding Standard Time) which means GMT+5+ 2( added for the wedding schedule) If someone expects you to come at 10, they will say be there at 8, if you want your guests to arrive at 9, you need to say 7. Don’t make the mistake of saying 9, or else, you’ll have people start coming in at 11, which ruin the plans for you.

Ok, anyway, so now we are there, sitting around, getting bored as hell, looking at everyone running around in a flurry to get ready.  It gave  me a lot of time for observation though. I made lots on notes on my phone which helped me get a lot of material for this post.

One of the first things I noticed was thing ‘cougar aunite’ who was sitting in a corner with a sly smile of her face. She, I later found out, was the grooms mothers BFF from another city who was visiting. She promptly went up and started chatting up…. *Gasp* My dad. Hahaha It was so funny, she just randomly went up to him  and started telling me about how the lady at the parlour messed up her hair and make up and how she was really disappointed and how it’s so hard to find someone to do good makeup for you.

At which point her eyes landed on me

Cougar Auntie: ( pointing at me) See! I want make up like HER, and look what that cow did with me

Me: eerr. heh heh… thank you?

Cougar: Yes yes your eye makeup is very nice

Me: ( now feeling a little proud) Thanks!....I did it MYSELF”

Cougar: Oh wow, that’s good, now I want you to come over and do my make up for me for the next wedding event. ( which was 2 days later)

I said there, frozen, blinking, thinking that no, she did just not ask me that, me go over to her house and do her make up? ….I didn’t even know her name!! Talk about creepy

Me: Er… um oh I’d love to but, I-I-I can only do make up for myself, I really can’t do it for someone else, it’s some hand coordination problem that I have…( which is funnily, the truth, I cannot even put eyeliner for someone else without messing it up, but I can manage fine when I do my own makeup- I do not know why this happens)

Anyway, so I got out of that mess.

At this point it was 8:15, and everyone was still rushing around, someone could not find their shoes, someone else could not find the camera, etc etc the usual commotion that takes place in a wedding place, and we were shifted to the drawing room where a bunch of other unwitting relatives, like us, had made the mistake of arriving early.

So, everyone is sitting around making extremely boring small talk and I was furiously typing away notes on my phone in the form of texting Furree Kattt a over-by over commentary on whatever was going on.

 I was typing away on my phone when this little kid ( The grooms 8 year old cousin) comes up to me and starts to inquire what I am doing:

Kid: What are you going? What is that? What are you typing?

Me: I’m writing messages on my phone…

Kid: Why? Why are you doing that? Who are you typing to? Show me show me!!!

Me: No, It’s er….for WORK! I can’t show you

Kid: (making a grumpy face) Everyone always tells me that whenever I want to see what they are typing ( angrily stomps away….thank God).

So at this point it was 8:30 and there was no sign of anyone from the grooms immediate family being ready to leave, even the groom himself was MIA. Turns out he had been at a photo shoot for the past 10 hours or something.

Well finally at 9:45 everyone got ready and bumbled out of the house to sit in their respective cars. ( I kept giving my dad ‘I told you so’ looks, but he just ignored me, haha). We were just getting into our cars I had just sat down when suddenly I turned around and got the shock of my life, the ‘cougar auntie’ was standing near the car door trying to forcibly open it! I was like

Me: Errr… jee?

Cougar: Open the door!

Me: ( I got worried at what was so urgent, but keeping caution, I just rolled down the window instead)

Cougar: Do you have room in yout car for one more person?

Me: (thinking, oh God, she wants to sit with us, well… at least she the ride to the venue will have some entertainment) Oh sure, of course.

Cougar: Great! ( after which she promptly runs off to the car parked in front)

Here I was thinking that this hag has definitely gone mad when she was back dragging a maid by her arm and shoved her into my car next to me

Cougar: oh we have no place in that car, can she sit with you?

Me: oh, sure.

Cougar: Great! ( and then runs off back to her car)

Anyway, so we were all going to the venue, one car following another when I passed by cougar's car and it turns out…. There was PLENTY of place in her car! In fact, she was sitting all alone with the grooms younger brother ( who is about my age)

The poor guy was looking VERY uncomfortable and the cougar was all smiley in a satisfied Cheshire-Cat kind of way….

 

Wow, this is turning out to be one long post, as not to bore you all. I think I’ll split it into two parts and share the details of the rest of the events in a subsequent post.

# 83 - You are flawed and that's what makes you perfect

You make mistakes, so does everyone else, we all do.

No matter how good we want ourselves to be, we all at some point cheat,gossip,back bite, be difficult, act bitchy. Mostly we don't mean to, but sometimes we do. 

We do, and the ones that we love, our family, our friends do so as well, and we still love them all the same.

But those people are very few and far between. I count mine in single digits, but at least they exist.

# 82- Don't run toward, Don't run away. Just stand there

Since I am having another sleepness night, I have decided that I might as well use this time to write a blog post quickly before my laptop battery runs down ( It's currently at 41%).

I have realized something while I was trying to fall asleep for the past 2 hours but not managing to. Quite a few leanings I am getting this month from practicing various things. 

As per my previous posts, I learnt that SILENCE is the best policy when it comes to problems ( which have no solution) that you keep thinking about over and over again. So I stopped talking about my problems to people - well maybe except here on this blog- because it's my 'happy place'- anyway, so I stopped talking about my problems to people, I tried to be more quiet than I usually am, and it helped! I had a sense of calm and it worked for me.

Now my next step, ( what I mean to talk about right now when I say that I have come to a realization). The realization is that:

For a great part of my life  now I have always been running away or running toward something or the other.

Running toward love, running away from love, running away from confrontation, running toward trying to fix problems that don't concern me, running away from people at the right time and running toward those same people at the wrong time.

I mean enough. I have had enough of running 'away' and 'towards'. I am going to try and stop now. I am not going to run away, but I am not going to run toward either. No matter what the issue is. I am just going to stand there and watch me burn.... ok no kidding, haha, I just like that song.

Ok back to the serious topic. New learning for me:

STOP running away  STOP running towards.Just stand where I am and have faith in God.

Hope this helps, I am going to start implementing it from this morning, which should start in about.... 7 hours.

31 battery remaining.

I wonder if there is enough time for me to read a new random Listverse articles before I try to force myself to sleep, or do the self destructive thing and put the laptop on charge so I can keep loitering about here till 5 am.

# 81 - Sleepless in Karachi

The title of the blog post pretty much sums it all up:

It's 2 AM, I have work tomrrow, not only that, I have a bloody deadline tomorrow (that I should be working on but I am not) and instead I am online, and I cannot, just cannot sleep.

This the time of night where one crosses their 'sleep threshold' and then you are just awake till dawn. At this moment I don't even know if I want this to happen to me or not. It's confusing.

I could always watch TV, but I don't feel like it, I ought to work, but I just can't wrap my head around it right now, I should just sleep so I can wake up extra early and start the work early. 

On another note:

I've had a blast from the past recently, haha get it 'recently?' eh no? um, nevermind. yeah anyway, something that I had thought was long-forgotten, something that I would have liked to think was far, far behind me  has cropped up again. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know, time will tell. or rather, there is no time it's running out as rapidly as my sleepiness is at the moment, the time-traveler who has made an attempt to step back into my life will tell.

Am I ready to sit back into the time machine?

Maybe.

# 80 - Teenage Dream and why I am stuck here today?

Why o why is thing song stuck in my head?  It's so old and still humming it without realizing!

You think I'm pretty
Without any make-up on

Isn't  it so cute when someone tells you that?

Anyway, the weather is beautiful today, perfect for a drive at the beach or a walk down the street, and what am I doing? Stuck at HOME looking out the window, and wishing that I could go somewhere and do something fun outdoors.

I do have to go, for a haircut, but that also means shelling out a nice sum of money and just sitting indoors, I want to go, like go-karting or something. Fat Chance of that happening.

You and I
We'll be young forever
You make me
Feel like
I'm living a Teenage Dream

You know, there are some people in your life -and not necessarily a love interest, they can be friends or relatives, or co-workers who, no matter how old you get,always make you feel young, you can be a kid with them, go crazy, act wild and feel like a teenager even if you're 70.

I was just thinking that I am so blessed to have a few such people in my life.

# 79- Protest day 7 -10 ( or something like that)

Well, officially the 'Protest Days' are over. What I have generally learned is that one can be in 'protest mode' without over doing it and be just fine. So that is what I'll do. It's an art, really, but you can manage it just fine. The fine line between politely ignoring everyone and becoming a hermit.

For the past week however, I have been coming home from work at 6:30 pm, attempting ( and sometimes succeeding) in working out, and then after that it's just mindless tv till sleep comes.

On another note, I found this really nice blog online called

I wrote this for you   

I don't know the author is. I am sure most of you would have come across at some point. A lot of my fellow blogger friends think it's really depressing. It is. But some of the stuff that is written is really very beautiful.

like this one:

You always write down the things you need to do, rather than the things you've already done.

You've got it backwards.