HOLIDAAAYS finally.

Hi readers, for the very first time since the 22nd of September. I HAVE A HOLIDAAAY!
OMG it's a much needed holiday, no waking up early, no running for the bus and catching a train. I must say I could get used to this. Going out tomorrow with some friends, man I haven't been out to do anything exciting for ages. I think the last time might've been in August.
My laptops finally come back from repair, it looks brand new. I honestly don't know whether they replaced the laptop or not. On the day I took it back to the shop I left a white stain on the top cover of it, you know, so I could identify it. But no, they've completely refurbished it. Thank you Lenovo :D

Man I love Christmas time, all the lights. Especially Birmingham city centre OMG someone give me a camera lol. But the combination of the new library, the Birmingham wheel, outdoor iceskating and the German markets is just incredible. The sales, and the non stop Christmas movies and hot chocolate is just mmmm.  I seldom have hot chocolate though because i'm lactose intolerant. What I find very weird till this day is that ice cream doesn't really give me much hassle, but having hot chocolate outside of home, is a very bad idea.

Sleep, I think in just 3 days I've paid of my sleep debt for the whole year. Last couple weeks of the semester I was going on average 5 hours of sleep a night. When I handed my assignment in however, I came home and slept from around 8pm to midday and then the same the following day.

This shouldn't be a 'real' holiday for me because I still have an exam to do in January,  but I haven't really lifted a pen since Wednesday, I hate the exam coming up, it's most likely the last chemistry exam i'll have in my life but I don't feel like it. For a while I've thought that my demotivation was because I haven't been feeling that great for a while now, I rationalised it with, increased stress levels reduce the level of immunity. I haven't been stressed and have gotten worse, the joys of getting a wisdom tooth (!) I've also acquired a swollen lymph node today which has got me thinking there's some serious shit going on. In the meantime I guess i'll just enjoy my holiday till my tooth stops irritating me. I know i'll regret it later but right now, I'm getting into the holiday spirit. And I hope you are too. Happy holiday's folks

Confused, marriage? why? how?

Confused, sleep deprived, stressed and all the rest of it.
Its come to my attention that I'm a very confused person, I don't really have a clue in what I want to do in life. This blog has nothing to do with biochemistry.

Jumping to the wrong conclusion, that's a huge mistake that I've made a couple of times, for instance, one of my very close friends got married recently. And she didn't tell, naturally i assumed that i mustn't mean a great deal to her if she hasn't told me. But then again I hadn't seen her on facebook for about a year. Internet connection maybe? I really don't understand why people, especially people you were friends with would hide something like that from you, not just her but I've firsthand heard more of the same story. Facebook's another thing, it allows people you've erased from your heart and memory to re-connect, after it's taken you so long to delete them.

Finding a spouse. Yes I've said it, in some Asian and African cultures the time for women to get married is the early 20's and I've hit it. My family has already started to give me some criteria, my mother would come up to me and say " i want a son-in-law who is good to his mother, one that will be like my son" and uncle "so there's no possibility of someone knocking on your door tomorrow" oh it gets better mothers friend " She's going to bring you someone she's met in uni" and the icing on the cake, my little sister " Hurry up, i want your room".
oh aren't i loved (!) As you all may know, having a boyfriend/girlfriend in Islam is a big no no. What really annoys me is the assumed pressure to get married soon, sometimes you can sense it in a conversation.

so how do people go about meeting their spouses? that's a good question and that really varies. some people are school sweethearts, knew each other but didn't engage in activities which are prohibited. Others dated anyway. Some meet through family, in arranged marriages where they'd meet in a room with people, usually family members. They may exchange details or they may not ( i.e if it's a long engagement they will only contact to arrange the wedding) There's many ways people go about it. And with the uprise of technology there's even Muslim dating sites.

Personally I'd like to know what the persons like before it reaches asking my father, that's why I'm a bit iffy about arranged marriages, you'll only see what the other person wants you to see, and that's gonna be them in a good light. when in fact they may only be like that 5% of the time.
Which is why I think the easiest way is to find someone in school/college. Then you'd see how they treat other people and how they deal with problems etc.
 Personally I'd rather be engaged for a long time, whilst i get my shit together ( I want to have my own life before i share it) and then get married. During that time it's culturally acceptable to talk, it sounds very restraining and it is in a way. But by not mixing freely with the opposite gender there's generally fewer heartbreak.

When i was younger i used to think, I'll meet someone in uni, who has the same lectures as me and then we'd get married when we graduate. Time has changed and most importantly there are no potentials in my course. I'm not a big fan of inter-racial marriages, not that I have anything against them. It's just not for me. I'd want a man who sings to my kids the same lullaby's my father used to sing to me. Now however the concept of marriage seems so scary to me, I find it difficult to trust people especially men. That's because I've seen so many broken households where the woman ends up raising the kids on her own. You see marriage to me isn't about the first couple of years where spouses are head over heels in love. But what about after 20 years? Especially if it's an arranged marriage you can't really know. I've spoken to one of my friends about this once and she said i should pray and put my trust in God, and she's absolutely right, when my turn comes i really should.

The part I've noticed women struggle with is finding a potential which gets me wondering if it's the same for men.

I'm not 100% cynical, like i said I'm a sarcastic person and immature (though I've been working on the immature) and if i marry someone with the same sense of humour, then a bucket load of laughter would be shared. I've just figured the obvious out, people trust who they're going to marry because they love them. So maybe it won't be such a scary experience after all!

First lot of assignments and exam

This blog is way overdue, a lot has being going on for me for the last couple of weeks. Exams and deadlines, I've found out the hard way about the joys of assignments, practical write ups and exams. Midway through my human structure and function module we had an exam, and because i'm trying for a merit based scholarship I worked my ass off. Some of the topics in the first half included the endocrine & reproductive system, tissues and evolution of homo sapiens. Our lecturer basically gives us some vague lecture notes which you then expand on, now I record lectures and replay them when I'm stuck on anything in particular because I always thought that anything that's examined will have been taught to us. That wasn't particularly the case.
When the day of the exam came I was unprepared, because unlike at college and school, you cant retake to get a better mark. The make it or break it moment came and I felt sick. The actual exam questions were hard and most of them you wouldn't have gotten right unless you did some extra reading. It was composed of 30 questions and 20 of them I was 99% sure that I had got right, another 5 were an educated guess and the last 5 a random guess.I was aiming for at least 85% but after seeing the exam questions, I was pretty content with what I achieved. This was the nice bit.

OMG assignments! One pitfall of doing A levels is that they dont prepare you for assignments. My first assignment was to compare and contrast the structures of eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Simple essay question, but you cant use what you know unless you can find a reliable source to reference from. So my college biology teacher telling me that they have different sized ribosomes wouldn't be able to go in my assignment. What really screwed me over is that I didn't have that long to complete it, I think I've had it for 2/3 weeks, but I prioritised my exam, leaving me 5 days to complete that assignment and a practical write up. To cut a long story short, I made a complete mess of both, and most of the marks lost were due to referencing. And I cant re-do them.
I believe that you should be able to retake/re-do things as many times as you need to, this is actually from my personal experience. I got a D in my core maths module, not once, not twice but 3 times until finally I got an A in it, but oh well! So now the only way for me to get a decent grade in my chemistry module is to do amazingly well in the exam.

I would've never imagined a busy schedule like this, but I guess that the constant deadlines means leaving little time to slack. But it has taught me one thing, that I love biology over chemistry, don't get me wrong I find chemistry really interesting but no, I cant risk my final grade doing another chemistry module.

Semester 1 is nearly over and it felt more like a year, it's made me hungrier and has changed me as a person. This will make more sense in the next blog. 

just took 2 days off revision

Before I started university I knew that it was going to be hard, I just thought with the right amount of hours put in i'd be able to hack it and get a first. No no no, that's not how it works dears. One of my first examined modules is called human structure and function and that's so hardcore, I mean we did so much work from the get go. In about 2 hours the professor would go through 14 pages. 14 pages that have terminology that I've never even heard of. osteoblast, extra cellular matrix, cartilage... just kidding about the last one. I've spent maybe 8 hours on tissues, 2 hours of my timetabled lecture, I then slipped into the repeat lecture which was another 2 hours. 3 hours of revision on Saturday and then 4 hours this week. that's 10 hours! and I'm just halfway through the lecture notes. Now in order to create a work/life balance and a bit of pocket money I took a day of to bake some cakes and then sell them to a sweets shop. Don't get me wrong I did do some work, a chemistry problems sheet but nothing really quantifiable.

This is how things went downhill, on Wednesdays I have a workshop in the mornings, since it was just the second workshop we didn't do much aside from familiarise ourselves to our e-portfolios,
and I have a chemistry practical in the afternoons from 2-5. To enter the lab you must complete a health and safety test and pass it, now because I have 2 different sets of practicals I thought it was the same health and safety test, but before we go on to that. I forgot my lab coat and goggles at home, so I had to take the train back. It completely slipped my mind that I need to print a practical booklet and complete the test, this just dawned on me at 12.40 when I was getting ready to leave.

The health and safety test was really hard and I have no idea what the pass rate is, the questions were things like which of the following is not true for a pregnant woman and what colour fire extinguisher should you not use for organic fires. What?
In my first attempt I got 19/30 which was an obvious fail, I attempted it again and got 21/30 which was still a fail! on top of that it was now 13.10 bearing in mind a 40 minute journey to my uni. I don't know why I even went to be honest, I guess I was just trying my luck but my train got delayed. And I arrived at uni at 14.05
Schools and colleges may be lenient when you're a couple of minutes late but at university, well my university anyway there's absolutely no tolerance so I just ended up going to the library. I was actually upset so feeling sorry for my self I bought my self a Starbucks 'white' mocha... or so I ordered. only when I got home did I realise it was an ordinary mocha. I then got my self a carrot cake. what can I say? I comfort eat, sometimes I need those food opiates. I then spent to time chatting to my family and then went to sleep.
Thursday: my day off uni which I planned to revise and bake cakes, but since when do things go my way? I spent 9-12 with my aunt and grandma helping them re-do the living room, and then I had to cook for both families and on top of that I made 14 cakes, collected my sister from school and then delivered dinner to my aunt. Long story short I ended up not doing much revision.

It's going to be Monday again real soon, and I have a lecture and a half to finish! The moral of this blog is. never take a whole day of revision, it's hard to get back into that pattern once you've taken even a day of.

Some good has come out of this long and dreadful week, I've stopped writing motivational messages but last night some magic happened. This happened.
 It's not about how it starts... but how it ends. Things will go someway, but not always yours. How you deal with that is more important than how it ends. Life is a rollercoaster, it will take you up and down and spin you around, make you lose direction.
Wounds will heal, broken hearts will mend. Weather the storm and your scars will become inspirational stories!

It's no longer just about me

Troughout my whole life I've always aimed high for selfish reasons, to live a luxurious life. To take my kids to the best private schools, to live in a expensive life. My family supported that idea, except their vision was through medicine, to become a doctor and then go back to our home country and open a private clinic. Which is why I started of my academic life geared towards medicine, demonstrated by A level (studied between 16-18 usually) and GCSE (Examinations taken at 16) choices and also all the volunteer work I used to look for and do. But I'm so happy that medicine didn't work out for me (you don't hear that very often I think) don't get me wrong I love the knowledge is entails. I'm passionate about life sciences-well just the parts that apply to humans.
But I've come to realise that I don't want to be a doctor -for now anyway, it's a hard job and its not worth the stress and pressure if its just about the money.

But I'm averting from my point. My country is just getting back from it's feet after 20 years of civil war, lots of organisation are getting started up to help better it. After watching a couple of youtube clips about people going back and making a huge difference, be it through medicines, new hospitals, schools and universities. I feel like it's also my duty to go back and make a difference in peoples lives, a difference in the quality of water they drink, increase their aspirations and make millions of dreams possible. I've had it really easy in the west and I've never been to my home country. In England there is income support for those who need it, free education and also free school meals for those children whose parents are unemployed. In my country however there is no such thing, you get what you work for, and work is scarce in war torn areas, in fact if the husband dies in a family, they will forever be poor. unless/until the children are old enough, or they have family abroad.

Which is why I've decided tonight that I really should stop acting spoilt, who cares if any job I get into just pays the minimum wage, or if I end up on benefits, at least it's something. Not that I've set my standards low but we really should appreciate what we have.

God willing I will make a huge difference to those who really need it. One school and One hospital at a time.

You see it's no longer about just me, it's about my people.

I am now 2 weeks into university life, and it looks like freshers week was definitely over rated. Not much that interests me was going on, only thing that I found interesting was languages. I have a passion for language, fluent in 2 languages and have a GCSE in German, though I wouldn't be able to have a conversation with a German person (tried it once in Frankfurt and failed) .
There was a beginners Italian class going on at a convenient time which I attended, Italian sounds so amazing when spoken and their culture seems full of life. The beginning was quite easy "Come si chiama" which means whats your name. But then it got so difficult so fast and I realised that I was being superficial in a way. I expected it to be easy and sound like the stereotypes.
Then I decided that since its possible to get credits for languages and increased employability, I'd revisit my good old freund (friend) German.
Obviously with all things in life there was a catch, you could only do it if your course was less than a certain amount of credits, with biochemistry you pretty much have a full timetable credits wise- don't even get me started with contact hours. So... the only way for me to carry on with German and have it accredited is if I pay for it, and with the cost of tuition fees I'm not willing to pay a penny more.

University is nothing like I thought it would be like. which is disappointing. You never see the same people again, in two of my lectures there are 350 people, every time I go I see someone I haven't seen before. At my uni we only have lectures and practical (practical's are once a week). so we literally have no interaction with our teachers, where other universities have seminar and/or tutorials, we have questions set online weekly which aren't even marked. Meaning you're on your own and it's also harder to make friends that way. So far I've only made 2, and have forgotten the name of one already :/
What's really annoying though is that they started this whole 'online tutorial' this year because in previous years students didn't turn up, and I for one am really pissed that I'm paying for others wrong doings.

Biochem blogger

So I’ve decided to try my hand at blogging, I mean why put interesting ideas to waste? Warning in advance, I am a scientist (well will be in a bit starting my undergrad year doing biochemistry)

But sometimes I wonder, aren’t we all just a lifesize version of a textbook, we grow taller: mitosis, develop fingers: apoptosis. All of our thinking and being can be traced down and broken into the firing of neurons and division of cells. I know its more complicated than that but it makes sense. But what presses the buttons on our remote control? (not an actual one, the central nervous system would be appropriate here) this is usually the starting points of debates but I wont go there. Anyways that what I find really fascinating, and if you do too that’s great!

The hot topic right now seems to be going to university, and I’ll be going to university (Yaay, God willing) But what do I do now, I’ll be commuting, the whole journey is around 40 minutes so that should be fine. But that does mean that I’ll be missing out on the whole “university experience” I’ve heard so much about it, I’ve even met some people who live near the uni that live on campus for that particular reason. Bummer.  But what I have done is logged on to the student room and seen if I could find other people doing my course, I honestly don’t know what I was expecting when I did,  I found one other person so yh. I think the whole uni experience thing is over rated though from what I hear its all about the night life, bars and getting drunk. But I’m a Muslim so those things are off my list, hopefully I’ll find something though. I don’t know but I’ve always wanted to be in some sort of group, not like the ones that you see in American high schools though, where you see a group of jocks and cheerleaders etc. but like a group of people that share the same interests as me, like a debating society or a drama club. Definitely a sports team though, I’ve always wanted to join a serious girls football team, I have once when I was in year 9 (aged 13)  anything after that was non-competitive and most of the girls only did it because they found the PE teacher attractive (typical). So I cant wait to play competitively again.

For those of you lucky enough to be moving out, I wish you the best of luck. And for us commuters, we need to find ourselves something to do hombres. I don’t know about you guys but after results day I threw my A level material out, well, except for the textbooks I’ve bought which I’m still contemplating on selling or keeping just in case I need them for my first year.