Last night I had my first class session for a six week M.Sc. course that I’m teaching. Pretty interesting student demographic – no white folks at all - four Arab chics, two Indian chics, two Arab guys, two Pakistani guys, one Iranian guy, and two Chinese chics. With 13 people, it’s a good class size for a graduate course – not too big, not too small. There should be good class discussion.

I’ve been teaching graduate level courses for over seven years now, and I’ve seen the demographics...

Ever heard a Russian guy sing Indian songs… I just did this past weekend.

On my way back from Boston, I took a cab to the airport and got chatting away with the driver who happened to be Russian. The conversation started with talking about hockey and other assorted sports, but upon learning of my desi background, he started telling me how popular Raj Kapoor movies are in Russia even to date, and how he much he was revered there as a superb artist.

I’ve never seen much of...

Sitting here in a hotel room watching TV – Trauma is on. It’s a good show… makes you appreciate the work of emergency medical personnel and paramedics. I also have to admit that I like Anastassia Griffith’s character in the show – just something about a blonde who exudes poise and confidence rather than being consumed with beauty and looks.

Also wondering how I came to develop my travel quirks – like drinking tomato juice on the plane, ordering chocolate ice cream through room service...

Starting my Sunday morning at 7:00 am…

• I just put a mix of Costa-Rican & Nabob to brew myself a pot of coffee for the rest of the morning before wife wakes up and we can have brunch.
• I’m listening to this song that’s been stuck in my head since I heard it yesterday – it’s called Saanware from the album Teri Justajoo.
• I’m planning to finish reworking on chapter 3 – my advisor wants me to add another diagram to explain my research design. So I gotta do that – and then hopefully today,

...

Met an old friend today and just reminisced about some wonderful times gone by.
People move on but memories stay with you forever.


At the end of the day, although we reach crossroads where we choose to go on divergent paths, it’s not too easy to forget the paths that brought us together in the first place, and what transpired when we travelled...

I co-presented at a conference yesterday where we had a very good audience turnout – especially considering that we were presenting hard-core research to practitioners who we thought might not have been interested in that type of presentation in the first place. We had about 40 people in the audience which was an exceptionally good turnout at a large conference with 10 to 12 concurrent sessions going on.

Anyways, the presentation went well, we had a few insightful questions from the...

So I got 5 hours of sleep last night and feel a little better… this is after almost 10 days of 2 to 3 hours of sleep each day. So batteries are sort of recharged.

Still have a lot of work to do though – I’m basically behind about 5 days from what I had set myself to do. It’s just taking way longer than I expected, especially now that I have to worry about page length as well. I keep wondering if there is a better way to say all I need to say in lesser number of pages etc.
...

That’s right – I’m talking about my Ph.D. here – Piled, High & Deep describes it well.

Over the last one week, I’ve slept about 2.5/24 hours hours on average… and it’s going to be a crazy three weeks ahead. I’m trying to get my dissertation out the door – it’s high time I do it. My research was done ages ago (1.5 years to be precise), but working full-time, I only got to write two chapters of my dissertation with some drafts and bits for the other chapters.

So today...

both by the same singer - Mohit Chauhan - pretty good...

Just thinking whether our sense of happiness and desolation are mostly relative to what we see around us… moreover, the comparison happens to be with those who’re thriving in their lives rather than those who’re underprivileged.

It’s been almost 14 years since we moved to Canada. The initial few years were rather challenging and grueling - Parents had invested their savings in a business in Pakistan that didn’t do too well, and the rest went to immigration and moving related expenses....

Over these past few months, it’s hit me more than before how superficial employers and their policies can be when it comes to us caring for a loved one. As a professor, I see this way too many times with students who have genuine requests for an exception to be made based on their family situations. I had a student this term whose dad was suffering from heart trouble and she wanted some time off to look after him. Unfortunately, the University denied her request for assignment extensions and alternative...

On the hierarchy of communication priority, Twitter is still pretty low on my list of tools that I use on a consistent basis. However, I must admit to the benefits that I hadn’t expected until I explored the tool a little more and started to use it for more practical purposes.

I really don’t see the need for using it just for the heck of it! Many people still take the tagline of a “life stream” very literally – tweeting about their every moment and routine. Granted, tweets are meant...

This morning I took a cab to a meeting location, and as it often happens, there was a desi cab driver – an elderly gentleman who had been driving a cab for a few years now. I struck a conversation with him and talked about various things including work. It wasn’t too surprising to find out that the guy had a fairly stable profession back home where he worked as a physician, but after coming here, he just didn’t have the resources to pursue the required certifications to upgrade his credentials....

This post is dedicated to a friend who I’ll leave unnamed for now but who I’ve been missing intensely lately - a friend who I met through GS but our friendship transcended the virtual. She’s a friend who travelled a very long distance to see me. The days I spent with her are among the most cherished of my life. As I sit tonight to write this, I don’t quite know where to begin. It’s been so long since I talked to her… and the years that I’ve spent in her absence have made me realize how much she...

So tonight was the last class of the summer term. I ended the class early to allow the students to complete their course evaluations.

One would assume that after seven years of teaching, the process of concluding a course and drawing the channel to a close would become more or less a routine… but surprisingly it hasn't.

At the end of every course, I ask myself whether I was successful this time around or not. Unfortunately, there’s no tidy answer to this. Alhamdullilah,...