Quick List

Dear Reader,

My winter reading list is now three weeks overdue. :-( I had planned to write a review to go along with this reading list, as is usually the case, but I'm afraid that I have many other commitments pressing in on my time. (Aside: I've noticed that my posts of late seem to beginning on this very same melancholy, apologetic tone. I'm going to have to do something about this, sooner rather than later.) 

On a more positive note, I have quite a few intriguing posts planned for the near future, so that is something for you, dear patient reader, to look forward to. I also thought I might as well get the tedious matter of my winter reading list out of the way first, so I won't have to worry about it later one. Some of the following books actually form the last part of my 2011 Reading Challenge and it would by unfair if I bid adieu to the year 2011 without some mention of them. So without further preamble: 

1. Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide
2. Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman
3. Pretty Persuasion by Olivia Kingsley
4. Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
5. Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
6. Inheritance by Christopher Paolini (Confession: This very tempting book has been waiting on my bed-side shelf for well over a month now. I haven't touched it yet because I'm waiting for the holidays to begin before I become completely consumed by it, as will inevitably happen as soon as I touch it.) 
7. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
8. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
9. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
10. The Once and Future King by T.H. White   

Now I must go fetch myself an essential cup of tea. Being British, and knowing very well about all the stereotypes, I truly believe there is no problem that I can't solve without having a cup-o-tea first. So a merry winter to all, and to all a good-night. 

Nida

how to Waste Time...

Dear Reader,

In today's "how to..." post, I will show you how to waste one of mankind's most precious commodity. Time.

If you, by any chance, know me personally, then you would also know that I rarely watch TV. However, in the past, I always use to make an exception for historical/period dramas, like North & South, Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility and Little Dorrit (Aside: these four are my favourite BBC adaptations/productions in descending order).  But  due to exams and uni work, I hadn't been keeping up to date on what's been on T.V. So when I read this blog post by one of my favourite authors, Kristen Cashore, I was sufficiently intrigued by Downton Abbey. It set in Yorkshire, England in the early 1900s, and is about both the nobility (the Earl of Grantham and his family) and servants (the butler - Mr. Carson, the housekeeper - Mrs. Hughes etc...) that live/work in Downton Abbey. 

As evidence of the vast amount of time I've been wasting recently, I went out the same day, rented a copy of Downton Abbey DVD and watched all seven episodes in one day (each episode being about an hour long - the equivalent of watching 3 incredibly long movies). I had told myself that I'll watch one episode each day, but I was so hooked that I ended up watching them all at once with  probably a small 5min break before episode 5 to run downstairs grab a packet of snack-a-jacks, nice biscuits and a cup of tea (can't forget the tea!). And then, after I'd finished watching, I spent the rest of the night thinking about each characters' flaws (especially Lady Mary, the Earl's oldest daughter, played by the beautiful Michelle Dockery) and what might happen in the next series, which of course meant that I lost quite a few hours of precious sleep. 

Who are my favourite characters from the series, I hear you ask? (I have a good imagination) Well, first and foremost it has to be Anna Smith (Joanne Froggatt), the head housemaid, for her share kindness and compassion, then Mrs. Isobel Crawley (Penelope Wilton) for her stubbornness and cheek when defying convention. After that comes the Earl himself (Hugh Bonneville) because he seems like such a nice guy and nice guys have a tendency to be under-appreciated. And then Lady Sybil Crawley (Jessica Brown-Findlay) - the Earl's youngest dauhgter, for obvious reasons (well only obvious if you've seen the the series, but if you haven't then you, dear reader, definitely should). 

And if you're still not interested, then this is the ITV promo. 

And now that I've proven that I can thoroughly waste time, I'm going to go and hang my head in shame - for about five minutes and then it's off to 5 hours of non-stop-work-on-my-dissertation.

Nida

"episode V: The Cold Strikes Back" or "episode III: Revenge of the Frost"

Dear Reader,

It's bellow freezing here.

And it's snowing.

I hate it.

I normally don't mind watching the snow fall; as long as I'm inside with a hot mug of tea clasped in my hands. Other than that, I want absolutely nothing to do with snow, ever again. (Well, I think I can make an exception for the great joy of pelting my brothers with it.)

Anyway, I should be at university right now, helping my supervisor in the lab, doing my own research. But instead, I am once again wrapped up thoroughly in a blanket, with a horridly sniffly nose. And who is to blame for this whole escapade... well I'll let you figure that out for yourself.

It was a struggle to get up this morning, to leave my warm and comfortable bed for the icy wetness of the bathroom. But I finally managed to be up and out by 6am, just in time to pray the morning prayer (fajr). Then I took a lovely steamy shower, put on seven layers of clothing and 3 pairs of socks and went down for breakfast. As per my daily routine, after breakfast I walked to my local train station (a 20 mins walk by the way) to catch the 08:36 train.

The train station hangs precariously from a bridge, with train tracks scattered beneath and an equally precarious kebab shop on the opposite side of the road. The station extends three tentacles that become the outdoor platforms as they hit the ground and are splayed parallel between the train tracks. So there I am on the platform towards London, freezing my toes off. It's 9:17am. I keep looking down to check that I'm not actually standing bare foot on ice. The screen that's supposed to tell me when the next train will arrive has a jumble of nonsense words on it.      

When a train finally does arrive, it's packed to the brim, so much so, that people trying to get off the train can't find a way out. And of course all the hundred or so other freezing black/brown-clad commuters that where also imitating icicles on the platform, suddenly find motion and run to congest any door of the train they can find, therefore leaving little me without any hope of getting on this train.

Frustrated, I take the smart-phone-xperia-thing out my coat pocket but I can't get the stupid thing to unlock, because, of course, it's not going to work while I still have gloves on. So I take the frozen-twigs that where once fingers on my right hand, out of my glove and shakily find the app. with live travel information. At exactly that point, my ice-addled brain reminds me that there is a tube strike today. Brilliant brain, why couldn't you have told me that while I was still inside the house! ( Aside: sarcasm doesn't work well when it's only in your own head.)

At this point I gave up. I called my supervisor and let him know that there was no chance on this earth of me making into uni before 3 pm. To which he replied: "Oh, don't worry about it. I already e-mailed you this morning that you don't have to come in today if it's too much of a hassle." I thanked him with a politeness that I did not feel and then began trudging my way back out of the station.

20 minutes later, I arrived back home, shaking so badly that I could not get my keys in to the lock and so had to ring the bell instead. My marvellous mother, who had opened the door, immediately wrapped me in blankets and deposited my besides the cooker. After about an hour or so of defrosting in the kitchen, paying particular attention to my peripheral extremities, I tentatively came upstairs, opened my beloved laptop and began this scathing post on the weather.

In the end, I can blame neither the weather, the trains, the strike or my supervisor. It falls to entirely and wholly upon myself and my brain. *Sigh, cough, cough*

A word of warning dear Reader: before leaving your house this winter, make sure you check the weather and live travel information.                  

Nida 

P.S. - as pertains to the title of this post, well all I can say is that I only recently became a huge fan of the Star Wars Series. :-D    

Life: as I see it - my Space edition

Dear Readers,

If, for the barest tiniest moment, you doubt the extent of my obsession with books, then I welcome you to take a few peaks into my bedroom, my space, my personality in a solid tangible form. Enjoy!

I'm almost ashamed of how much bookshelf space Stephanie Meyer's work takes up!

This would be my bedside reading pile.

my "Classisc" shelf plus a cast of my TEETH! (Aside: note the photo, to the right of my brother and me in our lovely primary school uniforms. I was probably 7 at the time)

my university text books and revision guides 

If there are any books missing it means they have been lent out to friends

Ah! Christopher Paolini, nothing more needs to be said. 

If you have read the Inkworld Trilogy then you will understand why it holds so much space in my heart!

And finally, meet my awesome and adorable laptop, resting resolutely on my desk. It has molecular formulas on it which I, being my exceptionally nerdy self, found extremely excellent. It's part of Product Red, which was also really cool because simply by buying it, I donated about £80 to fighting AIDS. As the old-Tesco lady always said "Every little helps!"

Now we move outside. This is because I spent most of today baking in the sun in my garden. However, unlike most people, I'm not too keen on burning myself a tan. So why was I in the garden today, you may ask? Well the answer in my opinions is obvious enough: I was gardening, though not in the conventional sense of the word. 

As you might know, my house is undergoing some major redecoration and for the past few weeks (in order to take full advantage of the rare-but-wonderful weather) the focus has shifted to the garden. Our builders, however, have run away for some reason, (some excuse about stolen tools, though I think it may have something to do with having seen me after I'd been revising all night). So that is why I spent the better part of this morning being splattered by paint, when trying to convert a two-storey cemented wall into a white one. This also involved a lot of large ladders and walking at roof-level (Ezio-parkour-style). I have to admit, the white in my hair gives me a look of wisdom; although, unfortunately, that isn't mirrored in my behaviour.      

The rest of the day was spent, quite literally, shovelling truck-loads of mud and fertile soil into buckets. Then moving the buckets from one end of the garden to the other (about a 10 meter walk), then dumping all that black-brown stuff into our raised flower-beds. And who was it doing all this back-breaking-work? Well not my brothers or father that's for sure. Forget 'girl power'! for once I'd like to see the men-of-the-house doing the sweat-dripping-heavy-duty work while me and my mum sat back and sipped tea and acted generally fragile.    

Okay, I believe that that is enough of a rant for now. I'll probably blog next when the pain in my arms begins to recede.

Nida

P.S. - The picture above is of the Big-Butterfly in the garden that I insisted on getting! I can't help it, I'm a girl  who adores butterflies and moths.    

breakfast While revising

Dear Reader,

This one's just a quicky.

Unfortunately my brother+father have given my birthday present early. It's "bloody bad timing" if you ask me, because now I've become obsessed with discovering its every cool-new-feature which is gobbling-up my revision time. I'm told that it has the latest 'Android' technology. Now - being tech-illiterate as I am - I have no idea what that means, but it does make for an absolutlely-awesomely-funky-looking mobile phone. 

My new mobile also has this astounding camera (Aside: I really like names and adjective that begin with 'a' e.g. 'ambrosial avocados' sounds amazing) which has this really cool feature called Touch Capture. It makes taking photos so much easier. So Inshallah, you'll be seeing a lot more pictures of 'Life: as I see it!' in the future. 

Here's my first. I hope you like it. 

I couldn't decide whether to call it 'my Mess' or 'A view from Behind-my-Desk'. I decided to scrap both titles and go with 'breakfast While revising' - which sums-up the entirety of the past month quite well I believe. 

Anyways, I've got to go back to hitting the books - not literally! 

Nida

the Caffeine doesn't Work!

Dear Reader,

I know that what I'm about to say will upset you terribly: this is not real-full-on-blog-post. My first exam is this week and all I can think of right now is about our incredible Immune System. But don't despair I will be back after the 29th of June, to continue giving you your weekily dose of books and other-things-that-don't-matter-much. 

As to the title of this post: well, all I can say is that no-matter how much tea or coffee I drink (I hate coffee and only drink it at times of dire need), there are just some lectures that put me to sleep when I'm revising them. Unfortunately, It can't be helped.

(It's amazing what some people have been able to do with this disgustingly-bitter drink)

Wish me Good-Luck and, those of you who are the religious-sort like me, pray for me!

Nida