Life in Twenty-Ten

A summary of my life in 2010...

LUMUN '09-10: World Peace

January: First day of the year, woke up in a common room in LUMS, Lahore... ahh yes... we were there for LUMUN... Surely was a great experience, and when I look back now, a sort of a micro-simulation of what was to happen in the not-so-distant future... Although our team was unable to win any sort of delegate awards, we did win the best costume award! After all the effort we put into those ancient Egyptian costumes... we deserved it! A round of applause for all my fellow teammates, and of course, our co-ordinator, Ms. Romana Pirzada.

February: Don't remember much about this month, except for the fact that I was running around school, trying to grab photos for the end-of-year magazine! Oh... how could I forget the memorable trip to Sandspit...

A Panoramic View of Sandspit

Towards the end of Feb, I received an email from the University of Waterloo, offering me a place in the Faculty of Math... probably one of the highlights leading towards some major changes in life as it was...

March & April: Not much happened during this time, except for the occasional event at school, along with an increase in stress levels as the threat of GCE A Levels started to come closer... School Farewell at the end of April... TCS PAF, I will miss you... At the end, I was happy that I followed my heart and went with PAF as my school of choice for A Levels... a decision that I did not, and will not, regret...

May: Celebrated my 19th birthday amidst books and exam prep...

June: CIE kept kicking our butts until the last possible moment... (just as Sir Faisal predicted: "... system jaatey huay bhi laat maaray ga..."). My opinion on the A Level finals is sort of mixed... Physics went well, Further Math, first paper was moderately difficult, the second, hellishly freaky. Chemistry, a total massacre... But at last, we gained our freedom from the tyranny of CIE... the four years of slavery was now over... the wait for the fruits of our labor was now on...

Photo of my room before I left...

July: Visa arrived... preparation for the start of a new life in a foreign land began with a frenzy... Rushing here and there, things to buy, people to meet, bags to pack, flights arrangements and all that... I once read in some place: "... getting there is half the fun..."


August: Results came... Thankfully, my grades were sufficient to complete the requirements of the University...

21st August: Last day preparations, iftari with family, anxiety levels on high... Went to bed for a couple of hours...

22nd August: Woke early, got ready... On to the airport. Was really tense about the baggage weight and all... Fortunately, all went well..l
0725 hrs (PST): Left my homeland behind... End of the Beginning...
... Sometime in between: PIA's crappy food + travel anxiety = Stomach Problems!!!
1300 hrs (EST): Set foot in Canada... Was AMAZED when a car stopped, waiting for ME to cross the road... (a novelty back home)

September: Start of a new life... found a place to live, attended uni orientation, spent the first Eid-ul-Fitr away from home... Commenced the Fall 2010 term...

An experience to be shared... walking back home after a long, tiring day... expecting a bright, cheery home, someone waiting at the door to take the load off your shoulders, a hot meal ready on the table, and a bed waiting to collapse into after a hot shower... suddenly all these expectations come crashing down... you open the door yourself after a whole minute of fumbling with the keys, open the lights in the dark, gloomy house, make your way up your room, and realize that you can't just "collapse into" bed... you need to eat to go on... but to eat, you need to (at the very least) heat your own food... The actual act of eating takes about 10 minutes since (for once), you do not talk while you eat... And when all these thoughts hit you, you realize what you have truly left behind...

Mathematics & Computer Building, University of Waterloo

October: Started to settle into uni life... as well as handling things on my own... Learned a few things... malls are boring unless you actually need to buy something and find someone to accompany you when planning such an outing... grocery shopping and waiting for the bus in really windy weather is awful... plus my shoes, which are I brought from home, were not meant for walking in the rain...

Also in October: Joined the UW Photo Club... Went through my first uni midterms... suffered Friday nights with crazy CS assignments... almost failed Calculus... Looking back now... I guess I fared pretty well...

The Bridge in Front of the SLC

November: It felt as if the term was about to end (it really was!) even before a proper start... Spent Eid-ul-Azha alone... didn't feel much like Eid at all...

December: With December came snow... I loved the white blanket of snow... so much that when I first went out in the snow, I was grinning like a maniac along the whole way...

View from my doorstep

The snow gave my photography a totally new angle... only one thing though... fingers tend to freeze!!!

Snow on Bench

Mid-December brought with it the final exams. Algebra was a killer... Economics was okay, Calculus and CS were amazing!

Once the exams were over, I started a massive cleanup of my room (lasting half of the day!). Lots of rubbish (rough papers & fluff!) had accumulated over the past four months...

Spent the holidays at my uncle's place... Saw sales on a scale never seen before...

Results came out recently... thankfully cleared all courses... even algebra!

A peek back into the past four months... it seems that it was all a whirl... my sense of time has become totally distorted... Sometimes, it's as if I've been here for ages, at other times, it feels like I came here moments ago...

Looking forward to next year...

Happy New Year!