Are you SAD?

The weather is a common topic that comes up in almost all conversations that we have. It is the one topic that you can relate to with anyone in the world. Most often, talking about weather can be a good icebreaker in starting up a conversation with someone who you have just met.

As the season adjusts from fall to winter, it gets colder and the days become smaller. I have notice a trend among my family and friends to become more fatigue and lethargic during the winter months. I even find myself lacking the energy to go out in the evenings or workout at the gym. These symptoms are not just coincidental, it is called Season Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is a type of depression that people suffer from in the winter months. It is caused by the chemical imbalance in the brain because of the lack of sunlight. There are treatments such as light boxes that some sufferers use.

The reverse is also true if the weather is really hot, as people avoid going outdoors due to the heat. Doing a quick search on the Internet, I found that the best climate in the world is in Faulconbridge, Australia (my sister verified this with her high school Geography teacher), which has the most equitable climate, evenly distributed rainfall and mild temperatures all throughout the year.

I personally don't think I suffer from SAD, but I did feel a little down today after visiting the dentist, who gave me a feminine color toothbrush ... atleast it was a different color than my siblings toothbrush, cause that would just drive me crazy.

For service in English, press 1 or say "English"

I find the technical support being offered by telephone companies extremely annoying. Most often when you call a companies telephone support line, you rarely speak to someone directly. You are asked a series of questions that take you anywhere between five to ten minutes to answer. At the end of these questions, you end up getting a customer service representative anyways to help you with your problem.

Now when you call Rogers wireless support, you are greeted with voice automated support instead of pressing buttons on your phone. I needed to change my plan, and only a customer service representative could help me complete this task. I knew it would be a waste of time to answer the questions being asked by the voice automated service. So, I decided to use the following plan.

Rogers: Thank you for calling Rogers. How can I help you with today ?
Ozair: AgaBagagaBooggga
Rogers: Sorry, I did not get that. What can I help you with today
Ozair: AgaBagagaBooggga
Rogers: You seem to be having problems. I will connect you with a customer service representative.
Ozair: Yeh! (ahem) Thank you.

For kicks, I'll sometimes respond to the voice automated support with my funny Pakistani accent. It provided a few minutes of entertainment to my family. As Kip from Napoleon Dynamite once said

I Love Technology.

Move over Barbie, veiled is beautiful

The Muslim barbie doll Fulla is selling extremely well this year in the middle east. This article talks about Fulla and the rejuvance of Islamisation in Arab culture and society. I even find in Canada, it is easier to be open about being a devout Muslim among peers (work or school) than it was when I was growing up. Suddenly, going to Islamic conferences and listening to Islamic scholars is common and you no longer have to hide this fact. This is my personal experience growing up in Brampton, I don't want to generalize this to everyone else.

For the people who are too lazy to read the article, here are some interesting tidbits:

• "Fulla sells better because it is closer to our Arab values."
• "Her wardrobe had to be widened to adapt to the Egyptian market. In other words, she became more modern," said Ahmed, a sales clerk at City Stars, Cairo's largest shopping mall.

  Fulla can now dress her perfect albeit slightly less busty figure with tight t-shirts and jeans and wear the same colourful head scarves donned by most young Egyptian women today."

• "Islamic fashion is now something to be cashed in on."

Islamic commerce is fairly popular these days. The Islamic t-shirts is one such example. You can buy t-shirts that provide an Islamic flavour on a pop culture item. For example, one t-shirt I saw had the slogan "juma", which is a play off of the puma logo, containing a conture guy with a beard and a prayer hat. Check it out here. It could be my time now to cash in on my Gingerbread Muslim brother and sister idea.

I am thinking about buying the Muslim Barbie for my little niece Zaynub. Every time she sees me, she runs away from me. This could be my opportunity to buy her love and probably have me nominated for the chacha (uncle) of the year award.

More election talk and blog poll

UPDATE (1/18/2005): Check out a satire look of the election ads presented by Rick Mercer here. Especially the Youth vote bit, I could not stop laughing.

I have been struggling to come up with an interesting non-election topic for a new post (most people find politics boring). I have been wrestling with a few topics in my mind, but nothing good enough to post about. I know you are all probably interested in hearing about my potential topics, so I have created a poll, where you can vote for the topic that is most interesting to you (or I may vote myself to fix the poll results). Check out my poll here.

Since I must post and the recent Liberal ads are interesting, that will be the topic for my post. The latest Liberal ads are a last-ditch effort to scare voters from the Conservatives by portraying Stephen Harper as this evil man, who will take over the world if he becomes prime minister.

I can subconsciously hear "Muhahahahha" as the ad plays. The funniest thing about these ads is that they take the worst picture of the candidate to show during the ad. If someone wanted to run an attack ad about me, they would probably take a picture of me from grade three where I had glasses half the size of my face.

Although, the intention of these Liberal attack ads are obvious, the content is still interesting.

• Liberals argued that a Harper government would "increase military presence in our cities.
• He refuses to reveal his donors. What do you suppose he's hiding?

This article in the Globe and Mail has a complete listing of all of the recent ads and the counter-argument presented by the Conservatives. All I can say is that politics is a dirty game being played by each party and I have a feeling that this game will not end anytime soon.

Election talk

Election Day is quickly approaching us on January 23rd, and all you will hear now on television and radio until the election date are attacks on other party’s policies and promises that will likely be broken anyways.

Recently, I happened to stumble upon a debate between members of my riding. My initial reaction to watching a couple of these people debating was:

How did they become nominated to represent their party?

It was pretty obvious that some of these people have never run in an election. I don't want to sound too critical, but I doubt some of these people would be taken seriously in parliament if elected.

There was one person in this debate who caught my attention. During his closing argument, he read with his head down from a piece of paper. He started his speech off with a proclamation of

I love Canada!!!

As he finished off his speech, he pronounced youth as "gu-youth", rarely bringing his head up to look into the camera. I am by no means an expert on public speaking, but I know that reading from a piece of paper in a monotonic voice will not go over will your audience.

I am wondering how easy it is now to become nominated to run in an election for your local riding. In my riding, certain candidates have been appointed by the party leader without going through the party nomination process. Another candidate is a 24 year-old university student. It seems the party representative is irrelevant anyways, since most people vote for the party or party leader rather than the local party representative.

I have already decided whom I am voting for, since one candidate clearly stands out as a better choice. Discussing the election with other people, below is a list of what people have been telling me:

• I want to vote Conservative but I don't like Stephen Harper.
• The Liberals need to punished, and am not voting for them.
• I am happy financially, and don't want change, therefore sticking with current government.
• I want to vote NDP, but I don't want the Conservatives to win, so I will vote Liberal.

Whomever, you decide to vote for, make sure you vote. We are fortunate enough to live in a country where we can actually vote.

Ice Ice Baby

Canada being a cold climate country and the best ice hockey nation in the world, I always felt compelled to learn how to ice skate growing up, so recently I took the initiative to purchase ice skates and learn to ice skate.

It has been more difficult that I had expected, the depressing part of learning to ice skate is seeing the four-year old kid speed by me or pretend to crash into me, causing me to stumble. As I watched this four-year old kid smirk at me, I had a thought provoking moment.

Why couldn't my parents take me to ice skate at his age ?

My parents answered that they were too busy. Parents are always too busy to help their kids when it comes to doing physical activity. If I needed to go the library, my mom would drop the roti, and drive me to the library in a heartbeat.

Growing up in school, I noticed that Muslims rarely play at the top level in sports (excluding cricket). It seems parents put a lot of pressure on their kids to get a good education, never really allowing them to participate in sports or help them live an active lifestyle. This is partly due to the fact that our parents never really lived the healthy lifestyle. Although, the evening walk among our parents is common, I don't think it counts as being active growing up.

As the Olympics approach and we watch these athletes compete at a high-level, I just hope that there are more parents out there who will let their kids pursue sports or promote an active lifestyle. There are other ways to make a living in this world other than becoming a doctor, lawyer or teacher.