Bilal - younger siblings...

So it is the second week of half term and I woke up at 7am to find Billy standing over me whilst I was still in bed. I was a little startled to say the least.

Me: What r u doing?
Billy: Checking you’re still breathing.

Me: What? Why?

Billy: You weren’t moving...

Okay, I know I should be flattered he cares at all, but it is still a little bit weird! Anyway off I went to uni and later in the day upon my return...

Billy: Why don’t you snore?

Me: *A little taken aback* Err... what?

Billy: Well, I thought about all day today. The reason I thought you were dead is because you weren’t snoring. *looks satisfied with his answer* (What the hell, he spent the whole day thinking about it?)

Me: Okay and you thought that if a person doesn’t snore this means that they’re dead?
Billy: *shrugs*

Me: Well I don’t snore...

Billy: I know u don’t. But WHY don’t you?

Me: Uff, because I’m normal?

Billy: *goes quiet*... So I’m abnormal then?
Me: *I laugh out loud*

Billy: Baji!!! Am I abnormal? Telll meeeeee!

Me: *silence*

Billy: *Silence and a shocked face* ... Nah!!! You’re kidding. Right? Right? Baj?

I know, I know... I’m a horrible person. Sometimes it is just way too tempting :P

Medical career open day

At an open day, a 17/ 18 year old college student considering medicine as a career, decided to talk to my friend and I happened to be nearby.

The college student to my friend: ‘So are you glad you chose medicine as a career?’

There was an awkward silence followed and my friend didn’t seem that talkative, so I decide to speak up...

Me: ’Um, well yes. It’s a rewarding career and it is a privilege to be present when...’

I get cut off by my friend...

Friend: ‘Let’s put it this way... there aren’t any other jobs in which I would I allow people to cough their potentially fatal germs all over me. So there has to be something rewarding on the other side of the equation to balance out all the nasty and depressing stuff.

College student: *looks confused* So... is that a no then?

The end result – a pretty frightened college student and I’m not entirely sure that we convinced the student to join the medical side. Also I should explain that friend was just having a bad day and is not always like that, (lol!) and personally I think my method of explaining was much better.

Results season begins

It’s that time of year again. All across Britain, during the month of August, students will receive their GCSE and A levels results. I know what it feels like to have that horrible knot in the pit of your stomach, regardless of how well you’ve done. It’s the waiting that gets to you and then all of a sudden you have to open the envelope that has been placed in your shaking hands. After all that… well it’s a bit of anticlimax to be honest. The next day in the papers, the people who have done well get their photos printed in the press. These are accompanied by articles written by critics slaughtering the students who have done well, stating that the exams are getting easier and easier each year and that the education system has no real value left. With regards to photos, the website forwarded in a tweet by Dara O’Briain, summarises the whole photo taking scenario.

Welcome to Sexy A levels day - it sounds weird but it is funny ;)   

Graduation gifts for accountants anyone?

My cousin Saba is graduating with a BSc in accounting! Woohoo! So proud of her and pleased for her but I have a tiny issue that needs resolving. What shall I get her as a gift for her graduation? Someone suggested this…

Can be found at Amazon  

Clearly a joke gift! But Apple did suggest this...

Nice try Apple, but she already has one.

Now can I have some serious suggestions please? Thank you!

Defending stuff

I am forever defending things, whether it’s my choice of friends, career, cars, clothes etc but I guess we all do that throughout our lives anyway. Looking at the funny side of it, one thing I regularly defend is my use of Microsoft Windows to certain family members. And sometimes I like to use Comic Sans.

I’m sorry if this disappoints anyone.

What are you... a mouse?

‘Err... well kinda!’A leopard’s dinner was rudely interrupted by a rather brazen rat. What can I say, I’m easily amused :P

These extraordinary series of images were captured by photography student Casey Gutteridge.

Sinister polar bears

Am I the only one that likes the sinister polar bear currently advertising the Birds eye products?

 

Kind of funny right?

Does it make me want to go out and buy Birds eye products? - err, no.

Did it did make me laugh? - a little.

Having your cake and eating it

Cake is always good right? Wrong! This link is rather unsettling... http://www.cakewrecks.com/2009/09/creepy-crawly-cakes.html
Seriously what were these people thinking? Eek!

Disney Cartoons

A bit of fun, but I have to say, somewhere along the way these cartoons do have some sort of hidden message. And we grew up watching these cartoons, hmmm...

Oooh the drama!!!

Oh my word! Why am I still surprised when stuff like this stuff happens to me?!

The start of the Christmas holidays and with the snow falling outside, I wasn’t too keen on going anywhere. I read some journals for uni (good intentions right?) and for a bit of a break, I decided to make a start on moving my posts across from Blogger to Wordpress (it is taking forever I know!). However me being the perfectionist that I am, I wanted to tweak everything so that it was just right etc. Seen as my usual family IT/computer-related help person was away for the hols, I enrolled an alternative helper (thank you helper person!). Basically at some stage, I did something wrong – what exactly, I’m still a little unclear – and just for future reference; 404 errors = bad news! With the wordpress stuff eventually corrected and I continued with other work. Except a new problem arose hence this post!

I decided to back up my data (luckily) a few days earlier as I remembered I hadn’t done a recent back up for a while and I wouldn’t have peace of mind until I had done so. And thank god I did because on the 2nd January my computer decided to have a fit! Urgh! But no worries because you know I backed up my data right? Phew! So I set about fixing my laptop, I tried data scanning for viruses – no good, recovery disc’s – no good and eventually after an hour of faffing around I though screw it, I’m going to wipe it clean and restore it back to factory settings. After informing my laptop of my intentions… but in a more threatening manner – yes, I was having a conversation my computer at this point. Peaceful reasoning had failed and drastic measures needed to be taken from here on in! So far I've spent the entire next day reinstalling all the various programs I needed, which was a tedious task. But I think what annoyed me the most was that the windows updates decided update themselves in huge chunk all at once. Prior to the meltdown, I used have a few updates every couple of weeks or something. This time I downloaded 113 updates over two days and I’m still counting!
Can I just say my one saving grace in all this drama has been my wonderful external hard drive! At least I was prepared, but what still confuses me is why my laptop had an attack in the first place? I even thought it might be dust build up and ended up taking the back cover off my laptop and giving the keyboard and ventilation a good clean with a soft brush. I’m amazed at the sheer amount of dust that could gather in such a small thing! Anyhow when trawling through various forums/ discussion boards of what/ how I should clean certain components(helpful hints can be found here) and I also came across this thing.

Cyber Clean - I think it’s pretty nifty and I want one!

The computer is all fine now thankfully! But some online stuff has also been a bit bizarre. For example Windows live alert tried to convince me that all these people has their birthdays on the 1st of January, which I know for certain is not true.Or the time when Wordpress wouldn’t let me sign out! What is up with techy stuff lately? Maybe it’s like a new version of the millennium bug?*

*(Remember all that hoo haa about the millennium bug back in the year 2000? Seems so funny now...)

Twitter – lists, retweet function???

Lately Twitter have been adding new features etc and only been piloting them on a small beta test group. This feels slightly odd, I mean why the secrecy? Hmm... Twitter lists – personally I like this feature. Lists are great! Did I, err, mention that I like organising stuff? ;P Retweet – initially I thought this was good but I’ve quickly realised that if I do retweet someone else’s tweet, I cannot add my own comments with it at the same time. This is a little annoying so twitter please can you fix this?

Nobel prize

You get to a point in your life where things stop surprising you. Today I switched on the TV to find the news to find that Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel peace prize. As much as I like the guy, I just think that maybe he should have been a chance to prove his worth, after all he has inherited a country that is involved with an ongoing war. War and peace aren’t exactly easily exchangeable terms. Anyway I know all the Nobel prizes are well documented but whilst surfing the web I came across the IG nobel awards; an award that celebrates the unusual side of nature and has no cash prize, just a certificate.

I picked the following as the most funniest/ interesting from the IG winners from each year as they made me chuckle...

2009 –
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE:
People – Elene N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Research – Inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.
Paper – U.S. patent # 7255627, granted August 14, 2007 for a “Garment Device Convertible to One or More Facemasks.”

2008 –
CHEMISTRY PRIZE:
People – Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA).
Research –Discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan) for discovering that it is not.
Paper 1 – "Effect of 'Coke' on Sperm Motility," Sharee A. Umpierre, Joseph A. Hill, and Deborah J. Anderson, New England Journal of Medicine, 1985, vol. 313, no. 21, p. 1351.Paper 2 – "The Spermicidal Potency of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola," C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang, Human Toxicology, vol. 6, no. 5, September 1987, pp. 395-6.

2007 –
PEACE PRIZE:
People – The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA.
Research – Instigating research and development on a chemical weapon - the so-called "gay bomb" - that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.
Paper – "Harassing, Annoying, and 'Bad Guy' Identifying Chemicals," Wright Laboratory, WL/FIVR, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, June 1, 1994.

2006 –
MEDICINE PRIZE:
People –
1) Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine
And
2) Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel,
Research –
1) His medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"
and
2) Their subsequent medical case report also titled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."
Paper 1 - "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage," Francis M. Fesmire, Annals of Emergency Medicine, vol. 17, no. 8, August 1988 p. 872.
Paper 2 - "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage,"Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven, Journal of Internal Medicine, vol. 227, no. 2, February 1990, pp. 145-6. They are at the Department of Internal Medicine, Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
Paper 3 - "Hiccups and Digital Rectal Massage," M. Odeh and A. Oliven, Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery, vol. 119, 1993, p. 1383.

Some of them do make you wonder why or how they even came up with the idea for this research, lol.

Baking with Bilal

With the my dissertation completed, I finally got the chance to chill out with my family. I fancied doing some baking and rather shockingly, Billy decided to join. I made a pasta bake, a couple of quiches with different fillings that Bilal helped to decorate, bless! We also made some pretzels - can you tell which ones are mine and which are Bilal's? lol With the leftover dough, I thought I'd leave Billy to it to see what he came up with. After cutting a tray full of round biscuits, Bilal got bored and started to try different things. My favourite thing has to be when he made our initials for all of us; A for my sister, an S each for my father and I and a Y for my mother. After he arranged them on the baking tray, he called me over to place the tray in the oven. I couldn't help but laugh :P I think he enjoyed our baking session - whether it was the actual baking or the fact that I hadn't spent that much time with him lately, who knows. But I'm glad he did and makes me think that I should do this sort of thing with him more often :) Afterwards Billy even helped with the washing up - I almost fainted from the sheer shock of it all, lol. All in all, a good day :)

Cool but bordering on a bit weird...

Woohoo! Today was my last day of clinic and I just saw my last patient a mere 5 hours ago. It feels a bit weird knowing that when I wake up on Monday morning, I won’t have to re-arrange appointments at the last minute, lug around any equipment or have a full day of back to back appointments of patients to see. From here on in, it is going be all statistics, analysis, discussions, write ups etc. Also this past month has been a bit low on the blogging front due to my other commitments i.e. university, clinic, ramzan etc. So for today, I’m going to take some time out, relax and write up a couple of posts (about random stuff) in advance, before all the mayhem kicks in.

In one of my older posts I mentioned how my mum had weirdly educated herself on what my ‘type’ was. Well ladies and gents my mum has now taken it one step further. She now updates me on what my crushes (past and present) are up to these days! I don’t mean like a minute by minute account (she’s not a stalker for goodness sake!) but more like a general “So I heard from so and so that ______ is doing this these days” etc.

My best example of this to date is recently whilst I helping out in the kitchen, my mum pulled out a copy of an asian newspaper, pointed at an article and simply said “look at this” – which I duly did. I learnt that Ali Zafar had got married to his long time fiancée Ayesha Fazli and instead of later in the year they decided to tie the knot now. I thought that was wonderful news and really quite sweet – clearly they love each other very much. She especially kept the cutting for me because yes; deep down I’m still 13 years old *sigh*...

After I finish reading, my mum comments; “He’s seems like a nice guy...I guess he’s off your list now”
LOL - wait, wait... I have a list and I didn’t even know about it?! Besides what did my mum think was going to happen? I‘d move to Lahore, set up my own clinic which he would visit one day and we’d fall in love and get married? Better still skip the clinic bit, we’d meet at the airport just as we were getting off from different flights? Yea! That could totally happen... in a cheesy Bollywood movie. Lol.

Wonder how my mum would react if I told her I quite liked Zach Braff for his goofiness or Jon Stewart for his sarcasm? (Did I mention that they’re Jewish? *gasp* lol)
*sigh*... Well at least we don’t sit down at the dinner table and as a family discuss my taste in men. FYI this happened to a friend of mine recently! I cannot imagine how uncomfortable dinner times are in that family, lol.

Actually give it time, it probably will start happening soon, lol. I doubt that my Dad could refrain from commenting on every aspect of my life. He has to KNOW everything about everything, because (his own words, not mine) “I AM the master of this house” – to which I burst out laughing. Wow. I’ll tell you that response did NOT go down too well, though he did see the funny side of it later – quite a while later in fact :)

Steady with your glasses now!

A psychologist has warned that the way we hold our glass reveals more about you that you may realise.

'Glass hold' reveals personality

So someone actually researched this particular topic. Seriously.

Pigeon Smuggler

Pigeon Smuggling - again!

Again?! A man tried to smuggle 14 songbirds down his trousers and unsurprisingly he got caught. There are a few questions that arise – firstly, why would you smuggle them like that, down your trousers? And secondly, the name songbird suggests that they may not be the quietest birds to keep hidden.

Ah well, at least he had shiny shoes :)

Seriously, what is it with the rise in activity of smuggling birds - especially down people’s trousers! (see one of my previous post’s here) Is this a new thing or has it always been around and I’ve only just noticed it now? I still can’t help but laugh every time I think about it, lol!

Why, thank you :)

I received the following email this morning...Aww, why thank you Aberdeen University. I'm glad that you have such faith in me and I shall do my utmost to make you proud :D

Although I must admit that I don't study at your university and I have never so much as set foot on your lovely campus, lol.

I'm intrigued by their mailing criteria, I mean I know it's probably just a clerical error but what are the chances of another student receiving it who also happens to be going through the exam period? Whatever the reason, it definitely made me smile today :)

Also I wish Manchester University had done that. Do they not love us as much as Aberdeen loves their students? :'( Why, Manchester, why? :P

If I had a superpower...

'Tunnel' links New York to London

Invisibility cloak edges closer

New gel is stronger than steel

I read the articles mentioned above and for some reason it made me wonder;

If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?

X-ray vision, being able to see further than anyone else, the power of invisibility perhaps a bit like Kevin Bacon in the movie The Hollow Man?

So the question is what would YOU choose?

We're related? I think not...

I found this email sitting in my inbox this morning - received it twice in fact. Well it made me chuckle, what with it being April fool’s day and all. I wonder how many other people got the same email? :)

 Also Easter is on it's way, can you tell?

Very random!

Satellite navigation systems

My cousin Sara would love this story! Man + Sat Nav = Bad things may happen!!! Having flashbacks to our Alton Towers trip and a few of my journeys to Manchester, lol.

ARTICLE:

Driver makes a sat-gaffe
A motorist who drove through a fence and ended up teetering on a 30m (100ft) cliff after following his sat-nav has been charged with careless driving.
Robert Jones plunged down a near-vertical footpath and narrowly escaped a fatal drop in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
'It kept insisting the path was a road even as it was getting narrower and steeper, so I just trusted it,' said Mr Jones, from Doncaster, who drives for a living.
It took a recovery team nine hours to pull his BMW to safety – before he was ticked off by police.

Bad sat nav - wondering if the "common sense" setting was switched off? :P