Deen Sheikh On the road less travelled.....

Fan of travelling yes, fan of travelling in the winter anywhere, a Big No. It is true, I am not a fan of the cold weather, it is somewhat outside of my comfort zone. This November I found myself hopping on a plane for what was a work related trip to China, the last stop of which was the largest city in China, Shanghai. My first visit to the city since 2010, when I had dropped by to visit the World Expo. That was at the peak of the summer season and boy it was definitely quite hot that summer with the Celsius scale hitting 40 in the peak of the afternoon. My three days in Shanghai were followed by quick visits to Xiamen, Jinjiang and Wuxi, from the latter I hopped on a bullet express train to Shanghai Railway station. The journey by car which otherwise would have taken four hours and given Shanghai's reputation with respect to traffic jams, not the best of ideas. After an hour long journey by train I found myself at the Shanghai railway station. This was my first inter city j...

It is the month of October and since 1949, October has been observed across the United States as a month for mental health awareness, by means of which millions of people are reached through campaigns and initiatives to create awareness regarding mental health concerns. The importance of good mental health can not be under estimated, yet there are many people out there still who do not even acknowledge this as an issue to begin with. For many people, mental health issues are non issues, some degrade it to the point of it being a figment of one's imagination. That is an unfortunate reality in a country like Pakistan as well, where generally all health related issues are put on the back foot and not even given a fraction of the due attention they deserve. I am just going to simply talk about mental health right now, nothing else. I am going to keep this blog, plain and simple. I am going to say it again and again, Mental health issues are a reality, they are a God Damn reality...

Okay people listen up, gear up! Yes I am talking to you, the person reading this blog, i wont lie, I really do hope there are a lot of people reading this. So people as you all know Ramzan is coming, or Ramadan as some of you like to call it. It is coming, in the middle of this brutal OMG you are killing me kind of summer, and very soon you will be bombed with everything Religious or Ramadan/Ramzan themed. For the faithful, fasting followed by the optional Tarawee Salah, for the not so faithful and devout, being forced to have your meals behind closed doors, keeping quite about whether you are fasting or not, and try to not  stand out for whatever XYZ reason. Yet both of you, yes both of you, a very large number of both of you are lacking in Kindness. Yes, I said it, among both of you, kindness is an almost extinct variable.  Heads up, my blog will reek off a little bit of bias towards the visibly religious lot in particular, there is a reason behind this. I won't get into ...

Millennials, all right, let us get started with who or what this group is shall we? Well this group can be defined as individuals born from the early 1980's on wards, a very large number of them reached adult hood at the start of the new millennium. Think if you were born in 84, 85, 86, you probably turned 18 in 2002-4 and started life as an adult. Some attributes of a lot of millennials, they have very high and rigid expectations of what they want out out of life,they are the generation that wants instant gratification, they are the right here, right now, I want this done yesterday type generation. They are very easily dissatisfied, and the very first signs of things not going their way, causes stress, anxiety, sinking feelings in the gut, panic, paranoia, which in turn results in severe difficulty to cultivate and manage relationships. I am not an expert on relationships, but I do have a social science back ground, so let us begin by trying to decode millennial behavior a...

I Came across this book as an Amazon recommendation. I found it very unusual that Amazon was recommending me a romance novel, I am not sure how Amazon's algorithm works, usually I am a reader of Non Fiction, however I am some one who has always encouraged Pakistani writers by reading and recommending their books. I always seek out fiction written by Pakistani writers, be it by more well known writers like Kamila and Mohsin, or the slightly lesser known one's like Saba Imtiaz and Shazaf Fatima Haider. Our English language writers alongside their Urdu language counter parts are very talented and have tremendous potential to impress their readers. I was initially skeptical of this book, firstly it being a romance novel and secondly the author's very young age, also the Amazon sampler before downloading the book did not impress me so much. The first chapter or 2 that you can read as part of the free preview slightly disappointed me with  a slightly under developed use ...

The desire to travel, Wanderlust, is inside so many of us, so many of us yearn for that freedom that travel brings along with it. This is in addition to the many wonderful things that travel enables us, it gives the opportunity to unwind and refresh, explore new culture, meet people and also taste some great food along the way. Some of us feel that freedom as solo travelers, while some of us love to have company around while we travel and can never even imagine getting on that plan and visiting some place new without companionship. The benefits of solo travel maybe plenty, such as freedom and flexibility to do whatever when you want, while traveling in a group or with friends, comes with benefits such as better bonding between you and your travel companions, you always have some one with good fresh ideas, some one to talk to, and not to mention of course some one to take that all important photograph in front of a landmark, which was previously not possible before front facing camera...

It must be extremely difficult being a teenager today, I am sure no matter how hard I try I really can not imagine the true extent of what young people today have to go through. Today I am talking about bullying again, because it is a topic that needs to be spoken about as much as we can because bullying isn't declining but thanks to developments in technology and social trends it is going out of control and out of proportion. We live in an age and era where offline bullying is now accompanied by digital bullying which makes things a lot worse than they already are. Some weeks ago, it was early in the morning and I had switched on SBS in my Melbourne hotel room. SBS Australia is one of the few free to air TV Channels alongside 7, channel 9 and the ten network. They were running a program on how bullying in the digital age is effecting children particularly teenagers leading to an academic, social and emotional down fall of the next generation of young people walking towards adul...

Fairly recently I came across this little piece on the internet  about Disney's Beauty and the beast  which is a childhood classic for many and one of their great animated hits from the old days.Though personally not a fan of the popular children's tale, it gave insight into the story in a way a great number of us who have seen it in our childhood would have not observed. Seeing and observing something from the mind of a child differs significantly from how we see, perceive, feel and react to things as an adult. This little piece online gave quite some food for thought about the deep messages hidden between the lines, how there is more to a simple children's tale which we had seen many many years before any hint of adulthood wisdom kicked in. That little piece talks about bullying and social discrimination in a manner that makes it an important highlight of the children's animated film. The film highlights how damaging bullying can be and the consequences of bully...

There is a question that has been on my mind for quite some time. That question has been what distinguishes our friends from our peers, and should we practice social responsibility towards our friends ? At times, there are many people who can not distinguish between their friends and peers, though the definition of friendship varies from how the wo rld describes it, definitions of how we define our peers stay some what the same. I remember once picking up a sociology textbook that first year university students use for intro to the subject and came across a textbook definition of what a peer is. Based on that text book, our peers are defined some what as people we know, we get along with and people we socialize or interact with. Sounds like the definition of a  'friend' , but surely friendship and friends carry a different meaning, otherwise the two words would not be in existence or would be merely used inter changeably. Friendship in order to distinguish itself incorpora...

The saying goes that the first impression is always the last impression. It is something we have been brought up to believe over the course of our lives through a product of conditional and subliminal. To put it more accurately it would be fair to say that the first impressions are usually the more lasting one's when it comes to other people, These are the images or perceptions that stick in our minds and we experience what somewhat call a mental road block that distorts or influences how our senses and perception reacts to future signals or communication coming from the person following the first impression. The first impression that the other person leaves on us, whether good or bad sticks around whether we are the judgmental types or the open minded. The truth of the matter how ever is that if we keep a slightly open mind and think objectively for a moment. First impressions are not necessarily accurate and might not reflect the true image of the person we are meeting. Fir...

Islamabad more popularly known by the locals as Isloo, is the national capital of Pakistan. Located about a four drive north of Lahore, Islamabad along with its neighboring twin city of Rawalpindi form Pakistan's fourth largest city. The twin cities as the locals like to call it, for a new visitor if it were not for the sign boards it would be very hard to tell when one Islamabad ends and when Rawalpindi begins. Both cities are quite different from one another one, Rawalpindi is an old pre-partition era urban center, which since partition has been home to the Pakistan armed forces and before partition it served a HQ for the British Indian army, the locals are proud to hail from Pindi, while people from Islamabad are even prouder of their city. Islamabad is a purpose built well planned city commissioned by the then president of Pakistan Ayub Khan to serve as the future capital of the nation. At the time the nation's largest city Karachi had served as the capital of the newl...

The awkward kind of rude, the weird kind of rude or the very totally majorly kind of rude. Some people are rude in just the weirdest way possible. Sometimes the weirdness gets borderline dumb, makes you want to go facepalm right there and then. Well this world will always be full of really rude people, dumb people and weird people, so why not have the really dumb and weird type of rude people? Very recently I had dinned out on a weeknight evening with a friend of mine at one of my favorite restaurants in the city by the sea and I had encountered a slightly bitter experience, not with respect to the restaurant itself but as a result of some other patrons confidentially not just present at the same time but occupying a neighboring table. It is one of the higher end establishments in this city, and by design it is a beautiful restaurant with a brilliant outdoor court yard for those wishing to enjoy the gentle sea breeze of the city by the sea. The staff at the establishment are br...