Driving Lesson 4

So I had my fourth driving lesson today, it was by far more mad than the others. I first started with just learning how to steer, which was basically turning left endlessly and never getting it right. Eventually my steering was good enough to start learing gears, this is where the real frsutration started. On my first lesson with gears I could lift my foot off of the clutch fine and no engine on earth could have stalled. But then on my next lesson everything went pear shaped and I must have stalled 4 times in a row in front of the give way line before the raod. If I had the strength to bash up a car I would have done it.

At the start of my lesson today I was getting much better with the clutch because I had developed a unique foot tchnique that will only work with my tiny feet. The rule is to keep your heel on the floor, I can't do that, I simply don't have enough foot to do it. So I lift my foot off as much as possible and lift my leg the rest of the way. My left leg is now very tired.

My seething cumulative impatience with the repetition of the roads was palpable, so Ron (my absolutely great instructor) took me onto a main road (you know, with other cars, street lights and all that jazz) to show me why we needed to stay on the smaller quieter roads with the annoying infinite humps. I was SO excited! I even moved onto third gear! My heart was racing the whole time, but I truly enjoyed it and can't wait till I'm good enough to do it again. The lesson was learned, even though I managed fine with Ron on the main road, I wasn't ready to do it without his instructions so more practice was required.

My main driving problems are remembering to steer while changing gears and stopping before the give way line. God help me I just can't do it. I have no idea when or how to push down on the brakes and I still panic everytime there is a car behind me.

God willing, I hope I learn it in the end!

Wild Swans, By Jung Chang

Part of my new and spontaneous interest in Chinese history was reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang. I guess I'm kind of late reviewing this considering it was originally buplished in 1992, but it was such a lip biting, zone out for 7 hours, earth shattering piece of biographical history... that I couldn't pass up a chance to write about what I thought of it.

The Book encospasses a historical account of the political and social climate of China from the early 1900s to the late 1970s all through the eyes of three woman; the author's grandmother who was made a concubine to a Warlord General, the author's mother who was a member of the newly formed Communist Party and the author herself and how she was swept into the brainwashing effects of Chairman Mao and his government.

The book hence went through the varying lives of three different generations that was tumbled, twisted and turned within a matter of 20 years between them. From the Famine of the Great Leap Forward to the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution. What I found most shocking was how Chang's grandmother had bound feet, a painful experience of breaking the toes of a young girl's foot to bend over the sole of her foot, a process that had to be repeated during the course of development to prevent them from healing. All because the sight of a hobbling woman had an erotic effect on men; supposedly inticing a protective instinct in them. A woman without bound feet was doomed to a life of spinsterhood and blamed her mother for not binding her feet when young.

I could go on an on about this wonderfully researched and compelling book that you can honestly trust coming from the prespective of a woman who had been in thick of the Moa mania of 1960s China. What I simply couldn't understand was how a nation could get swept away into treating Mao as a Deity, some revered sacred man who's word was gospel. Coming from an Islamic background myself, I was taught not to even bow my head to another being other than the One God. So how an entire nation with it's many millions of millions of people could be so tightly held in Mao's grip is very difficult for me to comprehend; I belive it was the reason for the misfortunes of the Cultural Revolution, with their book burning, teacher disrespecting and knowledge truncating beliefs. It was backward, an awaful time, at time which the Chinese still today accept was a horrible murdering cruel dark era of their history, but the same people still hold Mao in high esteem even though it was crystal clear that he only wanted to acquire personal power, that power like most powers corrupted him, and corrupted him absolutely.

Still, I think I have to grudgingly accept that Mao did raise China out of the Kuomintang's corrupt ways and help to get rid of Japan's infiltration. And perhaps his tight grip of the nation's politics allowed China to progress to what it is today; the world's second largest economy. But like all powerful leaders, I believe the power he held turned him a little crazy, just like Muammar Ghaddafi, Assad and Bush. I think Mubarek was a little more saner than the rest of them, but definitly as power hungry. I theorise that this type of madness could be called 'Presidential Power Syndrome', a state of mind that rejects logic in order to find foundations for one's own decisions, and rejects basic humane qualities like reason, emapthy and guilt. Thankfully I think the British political leaders are a bit distant from attaining this syndrome, but they may be just a little silly in their own way, which is probably, simply, an unavoidable a feature of British politics.

Lesson for the day: don't think you're God.

A year of Me

Wow... it's been a while huh. Well, I have a lot to say... I had better get on with it then:

1. I have a JOB! I know... the impossible happened, I was so happy when I got the call... a year ago.. But I was very happy, and reading over how I used to stress so much about job hunting makes my current employment all the more special. I work in a Sleep centre and help diagnose people with sleep disorders. It's fun stuff, most of the time. Unfortunately I'm chained to colleagues I would do extra night shifts just to avoid. Yes I do night shifts and have experienced how it feels to attempt cognitive functioning with just 10 hours of sleep over one week. I have even experienced my very own parasomnias because of it. (Parasomnias = sleep disturbances or sleep disorders, it can be experienced by severe sleep deprivation in any healthy person).

2. I have severely truncated the amount of Manga I read, however I have been determined not to abandon it altogether and so I read the first 3 volumes of 'Vagabond' By Takehiko Inoue at the same time that I re-read 'Fruits Basket'.... two very different genres but both read with much enthusiasm! I still need to get up to date with the usual Naruto, Bleach and One Piece which I abandoned in the past 18 months as well.

3. I have gone back to reading books. Yes... Books, those things with words in them that can now be read on a kindle the thickness of a pencil. But I am not tempted by pish posh technology, I behave like a true human and read books from actual books with pages that can't be accidentally deleted.

4. My general outlook on life is, if possible, even more negative than what it used to be. I know from my own religious points of view, that it shouldn't be and that I should be optimistic and see beauty in the world bla bla bla... but when you read books of reality, describing events that have actually happened, not just impassive lines you hear on the news... You end up struggling to see what good there is in the world, especially in mankind. Mankind was probably the worst thing that happened to this planet, their ability to do bad is shockingly high, especially when there is some unspoken code of morality shared between cultures and countries, the simplest being 'Thou shalt not kill' killing happens quite a lot... especially under the guise of legality, such as wars. Syria's government seem to think it a sport.

5. So yeah, I dunno If I ever mentioned it before, but I am Egyptian by nationality and British by birth, so I got the write to vote for the Egyptian election (however I am never allowed to become an Egyptian president's wife.... phew). It was rather exciting ticking a few boxes with actual hope (rather than know all the parties are the same brew of politician), but you  understood the sense of discord when I looked down the list of representative's for my family's Egyptian county district... there were 142 hopefuls, 142! For one district of one County! At least something is happening, it looks like Egypt will be in unrest for a long long time.

6. I turned 24. I know there are people drying up from cholera and baby girls being killed to make room for a first born son, and living baby girls being circumcised, and mosques being bombed in Syria, and children sold into slavery, and landslides destroying homes and Tsunamis wiping out cities. But I'm 24!!! In my own world this is horrendous news! It means I'm older than 23! which was quite a shock when I turned 23. Being 24 wouldn't mean much had I been married/engaged etc. And yes I know it sounds fickle... it bloody well is fickle, now that modern women are thinking about being married at 33 after they've become consultant/ top dogs in their career, but in my little world (which doesn't mean much in relation to the real world, I admit) It's serious because it means I'm just another year older and another year closer to the metaphorical sell-by-date... another year closer to being too old to have children (the physical expiry date). All very fickle because there's no guarantee that I'll have children once married... It just means that I have to be even more patient and play the growing child to my parents (yup, my mum is still surprised I can reach the tap on the kitchen sink). But... one thing I know, is that you can't mess with Naseeb (I'll explain that term some other time). If it's going to happen... it will, it just either me or the other party are not ready... gah!

7. I was on the brink of turning feminist. Crazy but I managed to pull myself back. Not that I think there is anything wrong with being a feminist, it's just that I think some of them want to prove themselves equal to men so much that they forgot that they already are. Like female weight lifters.... I don't get that, they ruin their natural femininity because of it, they end up looking rather grotesque. Yes some pay scales are different between men and women in the same job but there's normally reasons for that. No I do not think that a woman's time of the month will cause drastic changes in her attitude towards a groundbreaking decision, but yes I believe women can make decisions that are sometimes... erratic, especially when she's upset, and especially involving lovers/partners. It's happened and it still happens and it will always happens, it's a woman's nature. I might be a feminist had I lived in some gender unequal country, I definitely would. But in the UK, I trust in the system, its a good one, so I'm not going to go nit picking for gender inequalities that don't mean much. Not unless I don't get my state pension unless I'm married, then I'll make some noise.

Compassion: Innate or taught?

I feel terrible, I know I re-opened this blog on a positive note, but what happenned to me today has widned my eyes to how truly selfish I can be.

A woman on the train today collapsed from what looked like epilepsy, it could have been cataplexy but I doubt she was experiencing a strong enough emotion to have experienced it at the time. Anyway, her muscles froze (more technically, her muscle tone dropped) and her eyes were wide open, I don't think I'll ever forget her eyes, wide as though in shock and unmoving as though dead...

It was really quite horrific.

The gentleman around her tried to help her and then she fell to the floor, they then tried carrying her off the train... This is where my selfishness came in. I was directly behind the group of men and sick woman and the train had come to a stop at my destination and as you can imagine they were rather slow... so slow that I was woried the train doors would close before I could get off. So vast was my anxiety for myself that I deliberately brushed past the group.

When my feet were on unmoving ground I was thoroughly mortified in shame... did I have no human compassion? No instinct to help those in immediate danger? No recognition of an emergency? I was so calm throughout the whole thing that it unnerved me. In fact, I was shaking after the whole thing had happenned because I was so shocked at myself. I didn't offer to help and didn't hang around to see if she was okay like the hero men who did. I just carried on walking to the next platform. I did go to a staff member and tell him the situation. But I was still very upset at myself.

This got me thinking all the way home of how I should be more compassionate in the future should another situation arise. But... how can you learn compassion? Is it even a taught material? What makes a person compassionate and caring? Is it because their parents taught them how, or was it something that was genetically installed? Or something else entirely?

In the end.. I feel rather cold hearted, the good bit I suppose is that I don't like being cold hearted at all. 

I'm Baaack!!!

Hello world, I've been feeling guilty at how I seem to have completely abandoned this precious space of written freedom. Sorry, I've had loads of things happen to me in the past 8 months which rendered me too busy to have time for fanciful writing, this should really be a valid excuse but I know its not... sigh. I thought to check up on my blog and realised that there was a new user interface, which probably isn't new but been hidden from my eyes for months.

Anyway, I discovered something called page views (I think) and I can't believe that I actually have some people out there that look over at my blog! I always thought that it was invisible to the world... weird. So I have decided to once again be faithful to my blog and actually dedicate some time to it to make it readable again so that it may be somewhat useful for whoever reads it. I'll start with a quick summery of my life: I am no longer a student and I am no longer fat! Nor heading for obesity as my doctor had once threatened against me.. I am a working woman! Complete with a monthly salary and everything. I work at a hospital helping and diagnosing people with sleeping disorders, usually with breathing related disorders, which hardly has any neuroscience in there but I hope one day I can return to that field.

I am no longer obsessed with Manga, this is both sad and relieving for me, I have come to realise that was officially addicted to the stuff and I'll write more about that later, but now I can take a breath of fresh air and say that I have rehabilitated myself and can move on in life. The sad part is I miss out on manga and don't read barely as much as I used to. For this rite of passage that I have crossed I have decided to take down my list of manga from my blog to signify that it no longer encompasses who I am. I will check in soon and write more :D