Respond to React ..

Came Across this on FB :

Have you heard of the Cockroach Theory for Self
Development?
At a restaurant, a cockroach suddenly flew from somewhere and sat on a lady. She started screaming out of fear. With a panic stricken face and trembling voice, she started jumping, with both her hands desperately trying to get rid of the cockroach. Her reaction was contagious, as everyone in her group also got panicky.
The lady finally managed to push the cockroach away but ...it landed on another lady in the group.
Now, it was the turn of the other lady in the group to
continue the drama. The waiter rushed forward to their rescue.
In the relay of throwing, the cockroach next fell upon the waiter. The waiter stood firm, composed himself and observed the behavior of the cockroach on his shirt. When he was confident enough, he grabbed it with his fingers and threw it out of the restaurant.
Sipping my coffee and watching the amusement, the antenna of my mind picked up a few thoughts and started wondering, was the cockroach responsible for their histrionic behavior?
If so, then why was the waiter not disturbed?
He handled it near to perfection, without any chaos. It is not the cockroach, but the inability of the ladies to handle the disturbance caused by the cockroach that disturbed the ladies.
I realized that, it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife that disturbs me, but it's my inability to handle the disturbances caused by their shouting that
disturbs me. It's not the traffic jams on the road that disturbs me, but my inability to handle the disturbance caused by the traffic jam that disturbs me.
More than the problem, it's my reaction to the problem that creates chaos in my life.
Lessons learnt from the story:
Do not react in life. Always respond. The women reacted, whereas the waiter responded.
Reactions are always instinctive whereas responses are always well thought of, just and right to save a situation from going out of hands, to avoid cracks in relationship, to avoid taking decisions in anger, anxiety, stress or hurry.

Naqiyah's Jokes

Naqiyah likes to make up her own jokes now a days. A joke she just told me:

Why do poor people not use running jogging machine in the gym ?

Because they run to the gym  ( they don't have cars )

Hell on earth and minor other issues

So how many times have you been faced with an option... lose it or lose it.. sort of out of the fire into the frying pan style????

Well, for the hell inviting disbeliever in all major religions God finally invented a vision of hell on earth for me. Sorta to show me who's the boss you know kinda... Well so be it dear God.. I already told you I welcome Hell so why bother with this little old disbeliever and not carry on with your grander scheme of things???

So situation is as follows.. about 10 days or more have  not seen my beautiful darling soul and heart my daughter who makes my heart beat.. i'm proverbial genie whose soul lies in the parrot, so he cant be destroyed unless the parrot is destroyed so to speak as in fables... well... my parrot if any is certainly my darling gracious, smart and sweet  daughter who's the oxygen in every breath i take.. and without whose existence I have no meaning nor any wish to be!

So here's me having spent 2 glorious month almost every day in company of my daughter.. 2 months that I did not travel, 2 months that I did not even do much work... just her, me and our daily plan of activities.. activities designed to challenge, educate, thrill and enervate..

Swimming and diving for her body and soul.. confidence and achieving a goal
Arabic daily cause her shirking from this in school creates a whole lot of unhappiness in her educational life
Typing cause this will give her independence and freedom to think her thoughts and put them in electronic form without bothering about qwert.. while giving her heads up in life .. ofcourse also because I can touch type and if I can  so she should ..
Skating because she asked for it.. yes she got damn good at it, and i bought two not one pair of gear for her one for my place and one for her mothers home.. but it did hurt my ego to have her challenge me and lose EVERY time :).. but also did make me a very very proud parent ofcourse!
Cooking cause the food is essence of life, I recently proved to my friend who thought surviving on bread and butter was enough for a camping trip, I showed her that without my barbequing and cooking the trip would be a bunch of strangers who travelled together, now we are a group of close friends who care for each other.. cooking and food is basic ingredient that brings people together.. imagine any occasion, celebration or sad occasion, felicitation or memorial.. without food.. its not complete.. cooking touches all our senses, sense of smell touch taste and hearing, sight and sound..... sense of camaraderie, of accomplishment , fullfills our hunger and achieves fullfillment.... so cooking with me she bonded withme closer then I have had anyone bond with me before
She read, I read.. I created stories, even wrote down stories in anticipation of having to tell her one at night.. we discussed and chose books, stories and characters discussed facts and fictions and fallacies and greatness of characters within..it was an endeavor to transfer my ideas, my thoughts , my learning, my experiences to her...
She played games.. started with some arcade games on ipod touch and samsung note temple runs fruit ninja, some online kidzo games and girls go games , xbox iceage, ben tens etc designed for kids to while away their times trifling with nothings , hand and eye coordinations , reflexes, designed to keep them occupied.. but i introduced her to adventure of strategy gaming, of building empires and creating forces, the importance of resources and rock paper scissor nature of makup of earth's forces..then added warcraft a glorious mmorg.. massively multiplayer online game 10 million players online.. all competing and immersing themselves in the world of magic and mystry of honor and greatness.. world where your organisational skills, problem solving skills, your skills at cooperating with others, and garnering your resources to achieve goals mattered... and she was hooked.. hooked by the magic, by visuals, by the gameplay by the fun..

so she would negotiate.. 15 mins of typing should get her 1 hr of war craft or empire earth.. 1 hr of arabic should get her swimming and diving time from me... ofcourse i was happy to give in.. my child needed fun, games , liberty to thrive as much as she needed education

Then came a day.. after the first and second fast within a month.. one on 27th day Rajab understandable and another on 23rd day ramadan (because jagwani raat) my wife made her fast the 24th also... I questioned.. why why oh why should my child fast!!.. my lovely child is underweight.. her food is constant concern for both me and my wife.. my wife hardly fasts and does so arbitrarily.. if she does she still doesn't pray namaz.. and finally cannot even read Quran nor do many things which are mandatory if she really was an orthodox conservative extremist who'd make the children starve....

She retorted that her doings were her concern and I had no say in them... she knew what was best for her daughter and me a vagabound uncaring person had no idea what I was saying about , that her daughter was a bori muslim and would fit into the norm.. well so be it..  who am I to take away from my daughter's identity , her sense of belongling, after all I had told my wife to take a cheque from me , pay to the community their yearly charges for being the part of the bori community, just cause she and my daughter should have the choice..I gave it second thought.. told her.. ok, you make her fast if you want to , but only if my daughter agrees......

My wife in her classic way retorted.. Fuck you.. you are the one making my daughter swim against her wishes.. her body hurts.. you make her play warcraft against her wishes.. she has nightmares.. so fuck off... I was shocked.. whether I thought so or not, according to mother of my child I was a bad bad bad father.. an insult to fatherhood and a danger to my daughters well being..

weekdays I would keep my daughter.. according to my wife's dictat I could not leave her alone with my maid of 4 years keeping even for few hours.. so be it.. past 2 and half years i've survived that way.. sacrifised work and meetings to be home home and always home... past 2 months always home, no way to go out of my house alone without my daughter in tow, and believe me never once taken my daughter to a biz meeting where she would be bored... but even so, its my wife's decision.. "give her to me" she calls me an hour prior to her sudden arrival, and I have to handover my precious gem to her, "take her tomm afternoon" she commands and I oblige a faithful fool turning up at her doorsteps to collect my precious...

So it happens that after my wife tells me that I am a bad influence for my daughter never a word comes to take her.. never a word to see my daughter.. never even my daughter who'z used to living sleeping, being with me tells me on phone she wants to see me.....!!

And my wife tells the world on facebook how some atheists ( namely me ) are violent bastards ... I can't take it and block her id but still.. violent ... me... bad for my daughter.. me.... I am reeling in shock...

and so have passed more then 10 days.. me without my daughter.. my daughter without me.. and so I am prepared to pass a life time..

Cause who's the fucking man.. to decide whats good or not for a child, when mother of the child knows whats the best for her.. who am I to involve my child in a tug of war.. when mother of my child would happily show me down.. who am i to listen to my child's plea.. when she tells me she misses my cat not me...

Wikipedia

My first edit on Wikipedia today : Updated a page on Sahara Pariwar... 

Another lazy but awesome summer friday

Spent last night playing empire earth.. slept at 7:30 PM in morn, woke about 1 PM, nice :)

However some real firsts added to today which have me satisfied with this day.

Configured Empire Earth on laptop and on my PC. So that I and Naqiyah could play as a team.  To say that she's caught on to Strategy gaming is to put it mildly. Awesome fun. We played till 6 with just a break for lunch.  So I guess network gaming in our house is going to be one of popular way of spending weekends ( My bro will join in via internet on the new PC that I bought for gaming for him.. he's been surviving on 2-3 hrs of sleep a day since last week as he's been going through the backlog of all strategy games he's missed out on in past years. You can say he's bigger fan then I am )

I was planning to take Naqiyah to Cocktail as she doesn't watch hindi movies, nor does she see much TV so really she needs help to keep brushed up on Hindi. I've decided to force her to watch hindi movies with me, however it being the first day of release and a weekend,  Cocktail tickets were all sold out for evening show, so I canxed the movie plan, and was considering how to plan the evening. Amy messaged that the couchsurfing live music get together was tonight and offered for me to join her. Basically bunch of surfers get together and play various musical instruments (mostly indians) and add nice company, drinks and conversation could be a fun and memorable evening. I've never been but its at Manish's place where Aneta was staying for a while, and Amy is a regular, so joining in would be easy for me. However Naqiyah did not really want to go and hence I was about two minds whether to go or not, when i got a brilliant idea.

 I took out the roller skates that I'd bought for Naqiyah from ages, and we decided to practice skating. She has had some practice on ice skating but she'd never tried roller skating before. It was awesome fun and within 30 mins she was skating along quite smoothly. She skated for around 45 mins and its gonna be another one of those things which she will hopefully learn this summer ( She's already covered 35% of keyboard and is well on the way to becoming a good touch typist).  It was another first for us.

I also promised to take her to the pool for a swim at night as we had never done it before (swimming at night). Water was just right, although light was a bit low with just a single tubelight. However today was another day for many firsts in the pool. Yesterday as Christy didn't know freestyle and was asking me how to do it, Naqiyah saw this. I showed her but she managed just few splashes. However today she did whole horizontal laps with crawl ( free style) including breathing technique ( means u breath out in the water and turn ur face up to breath in, and back to breathing out under water).. That was awesome first, as I was always worried when she would learn free style and if I could ever get her to do it. Next seems she'd picked today to amaze me... Yesterday to make her jump into the pool I had to cajole her and pressurize (involves me shouting a bit at her) her.. However today suddenly she said she wanted to try to dive... Although immediately after bending down to dive, she jumped. After lot of guiding, cajoling and appealing to her braver side, she finally managed an awkward dive.. But after that there was no stopping her.. She kept going back up for dive after dive.. until I had to stop her firmly. The problem was that after diving water being a little dark, I had difficulty seeing her under water.. and I was always worrying about if she had held her breath properly.. So another first for her was a diving..

More to come though... as soon as she started diving, she also got more confident under water, and started doing flips and rolls underwater... Also for the first time she swam under water and touch the floor of the pool.  If you ever try you will feel that sensation of water pressure building inside ur nostril when you try to swim straight down... seems it does not stop her at all! She was an absolute water baby under water today.

And then she usually likes to swim backwards a bit and asks me to hold her from bottom so that she can float or 'sleep' on the water to relax.. today I left her while she was sleeping and she floated on. Now she can absolutely comfortably float around in the water on her back without moving her arms or legs, something I can never do in the pool ( I always blamed lack of fat , but if she can do it.. I have no excuses)

Then we came down and finally she got her wish to make a muffin and , even as I write this I can smell freshly baked muffin right out of the oven...

A nice nice day this :)

Boobs Pasta

Tasneem / Bindi gifted me boobs pasta when they came to dubai.. I had no idea at the time how to make them.. (basically Pasta boob shaped..  :) ) ... but  2 days back, just before sitting to paint Parveen suggested making the pasta.. as she periodically does, getting the box to me and asking me to tell her how to make it...

I decided to make it myself.. happy to say it was finger licking awesome..

Pasta... Boil in water with some oil and salt.. rinse with hot water

Sauce... 1 part stock (Chicken or Vegetable, Parveen had some Chicken stock which I used) , 2 part creame ( I used nestle) , heat and reduce... mix butter , after some time mix cheese ( i used cheddar at the time .. ), add herbs ( oregano and mixed herbs , spring onions, mint leaves and parsely  is what i used) , salt and pepper..... mix all and heat...


Result was one godawesome pasta dish... yummmmmm!

Thnx B - T .. although honestly me being me, i'm sure it is one of you who gave this to me, and i'm sure i dont remember which one of u did :)

Advanced Open Water

Started my advanced open water dive today... Saved due to Naqiyah... Have not dived more then a year and a half. Had essentially forgotten most of the stuff.  When my dive center suggested direct deep dive 30 meters as the first dive I'd rejected as I was scared that I did not have enough experiance.

However when I reached Dive center today with Naqiyah, Christy and Parveen in tow they insisted I do deep dive first and then come back and we all go for shallower dive while these girls do snorkling... Their idea was that since wreck dive is also a deep dive and deep dive needs to be first dive of the day, there was no other option if I was to do multiple dives in one day. Fujera being quite far I would also liked to finish multiple dives.. But after considering that Naqiyah was quite quite excited about snorkling, I canxed deep dive and told Rosy ( the cute phillipino dive center gal, who manages to sell me expensive equipment and courses at supposedly discounted pricing) that I'd prefer to do shallow peak performance boyancy dive first, so that Naqiyah could snorkle at the same time. First time I also took anti nausea medicines ( helped... non of us felt even a hint of nausea, this was good.. both Pam and Lee Peng had fallen extermely sick on the boat ride to the island)...

Anyway I dived as expected ( Huge butterflies in stomach before doing back role with cylinder off the boat into the sea.. hight daunting and weight even more so) ... went down to 10 meters.. got huge pain in ears.. kept trying to equalise using rapid swallowing actions and trying to pop the ears.. but wasnt working.. so tried to carry on without equalisation.. Equalisation is process of making pressure in ears equal to pressure outside the ear otherwise ears hurt.. remember the fast elavator rides or plane takeoffs, and landings.. however since water has huge pressure difference every meter, equalisation is more urgently required every few meters and extremely neccesary...


Anyway i continued with the pain, and after about 20 mins realised / remembered that i was to hold my nostrils shut and breath into them to equalise... Which I promptly did and was fine...

But remember this was 10 meter dive.. if I'd done a deep dive 30 meters.. this same would have ended extremely differently.. My friend hashim on his first open water dive in jumera beach had equalisation problem in 10 meters, and tore his ear drum.. no diving for him henceforth... ! 10 meters is different from 30 meters.. I don't know what could have gone wrong if Naqiyah was not there.. just glad she was.. :)

Unfortunately my mask new one with custom made lens for my power of spectacle has a leak... Kept flooding .. however being able to see the fishes clearly was an absolutte treate... have to solve mask problem though.. removing water from flooded mask is not a pleasent task.. flooded mask itself makes u feel as if u r drowning even if u r breathing through the mouth...


Nyway seems i'm back to diving after a long interval.. hoping to finish advanced open water and Nitrox dives quickly ( I decided to go enriched oxygen route even though considrably more expensive, for deep dives.. pressure sickness and narcosis is not something i'm willing to even give a go at .. call me pansy if you wish)... then to my real interest.. in August wanna do free diving.. go deeper then deep without anything.. no oxygen no tanks no bcd no nothing.. just me , my body and the deeps... thats more like my kind of thing i've decided.. there's a girl called sara lise who's supposed to do this course in dubai in August.. only one around who does it.. me so so looking forward to it :)