am forever terrified of math…even the most simple kind…i went to law school specifically to avoid all math…except then family law happened…and now i have to calculate child support and spousal support for monday’s exam…forever thankful to B who spent a long time meticulously explaining how to do percentage calculations…now shopping sales just became that much easier…such a monster, i is.

here is my final article for the “emerging voices of asia” series that i was selected for last year. i represented pakistan, of course. and while i am sad that my time writing on and representing pakistan is over, i am glad that this blog series has permanently enshrined my experience living and working in pakistan last summer. this last article of mine looks at mental illness in pakistan including a mental health and the law conference which i helped organize in lahore last july.

not the most lighthearted of subjects but i wanted to end on a note of importance.

you can read it here.

Self-congratulatory blog post for myself on being done with my second year of law school. Waaaaahoo.

To celebrate, I gift myself a photo of the lovely Alexa Chung being scholarly.

When you go from being the person I once put on a pedestal to becoming someone best classified as a coward.

In some ways, I see this as just growing up. As we get older we realize that our elders - some of them if not many - are disappointed and dissatisfied with themselves and this only disappoints us.

And as we become adults ourselves we realize that so many of our heroes will let us down.

That’s what most relationships we form will turn out to be: a series of events ending up with one person letting the other down.

And the relationships which survive this; those are the ones which are worth holding on to for dear life.

Everything else is not of any consequence.

• Sage: How many baby snakes must die for you to look fly?

Just got off Facetime with my family. Here’s a picture of the lovely blossom tree blooming in our backyard. And me grinning like a fool because I was just so happy that it was Spring at least someplace in Canada and also because I got to see my three most favorite people on the planet.

I am currently bedridden and eating pineapples by the pound. And in the apartment above mine there has been a constant sawing sound, which wouldn’t be so strange if someone was doing woodwork during the day except that they’re not…because it’s been going on since midnight last night. So not only am I afraid for my life because there may be some sort of mad hacker living right above me but I can’t sleep or think for the past 14 hours. Thank god for an amazing roommate and friends who have been around to provide me with life necessities and to check in on me. And most of all, thank god for les baby seastar who calls me on the regular and tells me strange stories that make me feel warm and fuzzy and sleepy.

Also, it is official. I am the worst person when it comes to illnesses and being sick.

• N: I sent a request from Candy Crush can you please accept it? I need 3 people to accept so I can move to the next level.
• M [forever in love with little baby sister]: Send it again you fool. I blocked it. [not mentioning that I almost blocked HER for sending it in the first place]
• (5 minutes later)
• N: Sent it again. Accept soon. Need to play.

Was asked this super random but super intriguing question today by one of my oldest friends from childhood. I feel as if, in the next 24 hours, I am going to be going through my mental catalog of these books (well, the ones I have read) and reevaluating the answer I gave him over and over again.

And to clarify, I have *started* reading both Dracula and The Count of Monte Cristo but that was…oh, about eight months back…and thanks to law school I’m not even sure at this point when/if I will finish them in this year.

If you follow my blog even a little bit then you will know that I think Downton Abbey is the greatest TV program in all of television history.

That’s real talk because I’ve seen some pretty great shows in my time.

Prison Break (up until Season 3, at least), Mad Men and The OC come to mind immediately.

Plus, I’m not ashamed to admit that I was all up on Desperate Housewives and Gossip Girl for the longest time. Blarg.

But Downton Abbey is one of those rare, pure quality programs that is not only filmed beautifully, portray history (fairly) accurately, mimic fashion wonderfully but also leaves you gasping for air because of the sheer wittiness and thought-provoking dialogue.

Plus, Matthew and Mary’s love story, which spans 9 years, will go down as one of my favorite romances in television history.

Oh, and…lets not forget the fact that I am the biggest, most diehard, trapped-in-the-body-of-a-Pakistani-girl Anglophile.

It is actually embarrassing how much I love this show. I feel as if I could write love letters to each character individually because they have all developed so well over the past three seasons and I feel as if I know them all so well. And even though, in each of the episodes, it sometimes feel as if things are going along rather slow, it’s quite the opposite because the character and plot development is so markedly on point and things are always moving along seamlessly while the viewer is totally at ease, just watching history progress, bringing us closer and closer to present day.

Lastly, and I think I will die proud and fulfilled because of this fact, I actually started watching Downton Abbey the moment that it aired in Britain. I wasn’t part of all the masses who, as masses tend to do, hopped on the bandwagon when the show had fully crossed over the pond (that is, the Atlantic ocean). In fact, I was watching the show before it had even aired on any North American channels! 

I even taught myself the archaic principles of Property Law based on what I saw/learned off of the show. True story.

In other words, Tumblrkittens, I think you understand what I am trying to say and that is, I really do love me some Downton Abbey, which is why Les Roommate, our other friend Kaely and I, we had a whole day dedicated to it today.

We ended our evening with Season Three’s final episode, the Christmas Special. I don’t want to spoil things by giving spoilers away to any of you who are behind but it was absolutely heartbreaking. We were all shamelessly weepy and I’ll be wearing black, in mourning, for the next week. Sooo dramatic, right.

So well, here are pictures from the day.

Warning: one of the pictures below may or may not be a bit of a spoiler.

 Matthew Crawley. Les sigh. Les so lovely.

That’s Max on the sofa quite actually sleeping with his limbs splayed everywhere. And that is mope dog on the floor just being generally mopey about Downton Abbey being over until fall 2013 and life, in general.

End D.Abbey rant.

*drops the mic*

“Happy two year anniversary, honey. Here’s my T4 tax form”

-The Roommate while reading about the new British Columbia Family Law Act which will now treat common-law couples as basically married couples.

Also, in the same article were some quotes by a prominent BC lawyer. I laughed for a good two minutes because he sounds not like a lawyer but a poet.

“The innocence is gone…No more would the laid-back ski village see the carefree days of lovers changing partners “as frequently as the wind changed on Alta Lake” or “children of sometimes-uncertain parentage [running] around barefoot in home-sewn floral print dresses.”

I think that is the kind of lawyer I will be. A poet-lawyer.

I’m outraged because I went to Ichiban yesterday (the Winnipeg location and not their Reno/Palm Springs/Minneapolis locations) for teppenyaki and it was just…so…FOOD COURT. They cut the filet mignon so that all the juice ran out. The chicken was bland and dry. And everything was marinated in far too much sauce. If you are going to set me back $34 then kindly make it memorable.

And then I came on Tumblr and saw that someone had posted the following quote:

“Don’t settle. Don’t finish crappy books. If you don’t like the menu, leave the restaurant. If you’re not on the right path, get off it.”

Too bad I didn’t read that before resigning myself to 4 hours of teppenyaki’ing. Because I would have totally gotten up and marched on out and over to the closest McDos which never.ever.EVER will let me down.

Here I am with some lovely law school people.

And our fried rice which the chef shaped into a lovestruck heart and then made it beat with his butchers knife. Ok, ok. Admittedly, very cool.

We’re emotional illiterates. We’ve been taught about anatomy and farming methods in Africa. We’ve learned mathematical formulas by heart. But we haven’t been taught a thing about our souls. We’re tremendously ignorant about what makes people tick.

How important it is to find someone who knows the deep, dark recesses of your soul. And only then chooses to love you.

Crossrail, a £14.8-billion pound project to put a new rail line from west to east London, has been digging big holes all over the city and adding to the understanding of London’s past in the process.

The mammoth project has involved more than 100 archaeologists. They haven’t had to dig down far to find layers of the past in a city that traces its history back millennia.

A vast array of treasures has been uncovered, including medieval ice skates, an underground vault filled with Victorian-era jars, three cannons, an 800-year old piece of ship and the foundations of an 18th century shipyard.

It has also found other bodies. Archaeologists uncovered more than 300 skeletons at the New Cemetery near the site of the Bedlam Hospital at Liverpool Street.

• Kat: Agh. Imagine if unicorns were real.
• Kaely: I know. Just like flying through the sky.
• Kat: That's a Pegasus.
• Kaely: ...but My Little Pony had wings?
• [2 minutes later]
• Kaely: I had the strawberry scented Pony you could scratch its butt and it would smell like strawberry...except, smelling a horse's ass that's weird. But you think nothing of it when you're a kid.