King of all Chefs and the 'Zeit'y problem !

So, Friday was just another Friday, it was just another day of the week, I had my painful ,terrible, horrible, disastrous, morning class. No the class wasnt bad, its just that the timing is a problem, no actually the timing is not a problem at all, we had classes that started at or I have to say in this case ' Scheduled' to start at 9 am back in Manipal. But, there is a difference, you see, in Germany 9 am or 900 hours as they call it, is equivalent to: ' Come to class at 8:50 and get ready by 8:55 and the lecture starts at dead 9! But, however, unfortunately, I come from a land which has a different time zone and a totally different 'understanding' of time. Now, of course there are a few rare people back home who are always punctual, like my dad for example, but they are a minority and well nothing in life is interesting if you dont generalize a little bit. So,after gaining a lot of mental strength, will power and eating a number of 'donors' ( refer to earlier posts), I have learnt to be on time. I reach class exactly at nine hundred hours! ( Makes me think I am working for the German military at times) .

Okay, now returning to the main objective of my post, the day was just like any other normal day, the sun was shining, the green grass was umm green, the trams were on time like always and my first and only class of the day started at nine hundred hours and ended at 11:30 am.
It was exactly 12 pm when Gayatri came up to me in the computer lab said that she would be participating in this international cooking contest that our university was going to organize that evening ,at exactly 18 hundred hours, I must add. I had recieved a mail about it long back and since none of my other compatriots showed any interest, I didn't bother participating. However, in the afternoon at 2 pm after my glorious nap, God knows what happened and I ended up being in the kitchen helping Gayatri with the cooking. So our initial plan, or rather her initial plan was to make chapatis and ' allu ka sabzi' ( something to do with potatos) , oh and I must add both Gayatri and I are beginners and I actually started cooking only after coming here. Any how, I figured that we'd need some chili and onions ( brainy me) and so I went out.

Tragedy struck when I came back though, Gayatri as usual had to do a blunder, she locked my room with the keys inside! And we had no other way to get in ! It was 5:30 by then and the contest started at 6 pm ! And so as usual, it was left to super Naim to save the day and well I kind of did. My super brain cells informed my amazingly brainy mind that the window to my room was open ( I realized that only after sitting idle for 30 minutes though) and as a result , I went out in the garden and realized that my super sexy body just wasnt sexy enough to climb up. However, where there is a will there is a way and I with all my confidence, motivation , devotion and strength, went and asked the Mexican living upstairs to climb the window ( even though some other people know a different version of the story claiming that I climbed the window, I dont mind) . And so , after the door to my room succesfully opened up, everything was " Chaotic" and till date I really dont know what we actually did cook.

Due to some academic reasons, I wasn't able to attend the cooking contest and I had to go meet my partner regarding a project. I did come to the cooking contest right at the end , half expecting to meet Gayatri there ,when she came up out of nowhere and said " Naim , I won !!". Tears, " Khushu ki asu", emotional music from behind ? Of course not ! We both started laughing like crazy and people around were staring at us ! Till date , I really don't know what happened, or how it happened, all I really know is that we won seventy euros and I got my share !

So what actually happened there ? I have thought a lot about this matter and as usual even when not needed, I came up with an explaination leading to another great theory of mine. You see, Indian food in Europe is like an orgasm, a very 'hot' one and therefore Europeans get turned on very easily as soon as they hear " Indienne " (This is just my theory and if you are a European and dont agree with me, then you are as usual a minority!). But that doesn't make any difference, doesn't make my first cooking contest victory taste any bitter!

And so, in order, to celebrate my victory with my fellow blog readers I have decided to end this historic post with few of my all time favourite quotations.

Have a hungry day !

"If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate."
~Diogenes the Cynic

"No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut." ~Channing Pollock

"A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat."
~Old New York Proverb

P.S. In case you are wondering about the title of this post , 'Zeit' in German , means time.


Naim.

Dream world and the Theory of Origin...

And so yet another day passes by, today was just like any other day, except for the fact that I am not lazy enough to write something. Its funny, am supposedly a to-be journalist and writing seems to be the most painful thing at the moment. People usually lose interest in what they actually are supposed to do when they take drugs or take a drink probably, I know,I probably sound lame now ,but hey that’s my theory , my thinking, you can have your own and since this is my paragraph, my writing I can say anything I want to and I don’t care what you think about it, its just my own thought. So anyway, where was I, oh yes, losing interest in writing, well no I don’t take drugs, neither do I drink, though I don’t know how long I can live like that since its definitely going to get harder in the next year in Manipal. So yeah, the reason I didn’t write anything for the past 3 months or so is probably because I was too lazy and maybe because I became too conscious about what people think about me. Yep, those are the two main reasons, the latter being the more appropriate one. As a result of that , I imagine all day long and never let it out of my mind, I feel like my mind isn’t just me and that I am being watched by people all day long, laughing at what I write, laughing at what I think and what I do. But what the hell, I guess it’s time that streak has to come to an end and let myself out again, yeah, the Paris trip helped me a lot! A lot more about that later by the way. So yeah, today was a special day, just like any other night, I was with my headphones and music. Enthralling my imaginary audience with my imaginary voice and real music from the computer. Today was a different level all together though, I think my band made it big time and we started playing at bigger shows with bigger people and we grew almost flawless with each and every performance of ours. Nothing seemed to be wrong, I was perfect with each and every guitar solo and so was the other guitarist (don’t want to name him). Together with my bassist, keyboardist and drummer we rocked the entire Manipal. Yep, good times, as usual we ended the concert with the all famous “ Sutta “ song, after all it was a farewell programme and well we needed to end with a song that everybody would always remember and cherish ! Sutta seemed to be perfect, after all every other guy in Manipal smokes, I may be an exception, but yeah smoking does bring in some effect. All my band members were high, along with the other students, and I was playing the guitar. I wasn’t singing though, the song was sung by one of the outgoing students, yeah it had to be done that way since everybody knew that song and he wanted to sing it so badly. That was good in a way, helped me concentrate on my solo , even though in “ musical terms” the Sutta solo is supposedly very easy. So yeah the concert ended with a bang , or in other words ended when I realized that the small room that I am living in actually turned quite hot and I had to open the window. God, never thought Germany could actually get this hot, but hey that’s good in a way, all my half sleeves would have gone to a waste if it wasn’t that hot. So, yeah after coming back to reality, I realize that I still have a lot of work to do and as usual, I ‘think’ I have a lot of time and don’t feel like doing anything. Just go to your comfortable bed, and take a nap my mind says, the bed here after all is way more comfortable than the one in India, maybe even more than the one you slept in for the past 5 years in Saudi Arabia, Yeah I think it is more comfortable than the one in Saudi, especially the pillow, you can actually hide your head in it. But wait a minute; let’s talk about something else today, before falling into my usual routine and going to sleep. Let’s talk about something that has been puzzling me for the past few weeks in Germany, and it all started thanks to Asad , when he said that he has no country , no origin and belongs to the world created for human beings. Agreed, he calls himself crazy, and asks me not to pay much attention to his thoughts, but hey I tend to disagree more than often, and I’ll do it now too. Actually I don’t disagree more than often, but I just said that since I thought that would sound cool, anyway coming back to the topic, let’s magnify my life a little, yes I know you guys may think , there naim goes again, talking about himself, his values , his thoughts, his views etc. Well, in that case what I wrote at the beginning of this paragraph will be required to redeem again. So where was I, yeah , Naimul Karim, born In the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, however is actually a Bangladeshi national or in other words Bangladeshi by passport, currently studying in Germany for a semester and is continuing his higher studies in Manipal, India. Well, doesn’t that sound awesome? I know that does, that’s the only reason why I use the exact same statement in almost every presentation of mine here, gives quite an awesome first impression. See, all my life I have lived in Saudi and always acted or maybe was and still am a patriot or in other words loved ,preferred, chose, turned towards and supported my country that is , Bangladesh. Even though I don’t know shitt about Bangladeshi politics, I don’t know anything about how bad the economic situation is in Bangladesh, but I always dreamed to better my country, yeah I know, too many clichés coming up, anyhow, after finishing my school studies in Saudi Arabia, in an Indian school I must add, I decided to go to Manipal in India and do media studies. My goal behind that may seem childish or as people say over-imaginary, was mainly to come back and do something good for the media in Bangladesh. Sometimes I feel like laughing when I look back at my dreams and my plans. I want to work for the media in Bangladesh, and yet I can’t read or write Bangla, I wanted to improve the situation in Bangladesh without even trying to know about the major problems we face. The only thing that I honestly and truly did was to support the Bangladeshi cricket team, which as we all know is another story all together. So, I can’t call myself a true Bangladeshi, neither can I call myself an Arab, I mean even though I really enjoyed the food and the luxuriously lazy life in Saudi, I definitely don’t want to spend the rest of my life there, Germans follow too many rules for my liking and well India is just too big and has many different cultures to master, I don’t know how people can call themselves a true Indian, when all they know how to speak is their own regional language! So, where am I from? Where do I belong? Maybe I am looking at all this with a different and a wrong angle, or it may be a bitter realization. Or maybe my mind is going through a transition from a dreamy-Childish state to a mature-adult thinking system? I loved one of the lines Asad had told me and I guess is the most appropriate time to quote him. “The world is a place made for human beings, I wish to travel everywhere and to every country. Whoever said that I can belong only to one country? Doesn’t this world belong to me? Am I not as much of a human being as the Americans or the Europeans are? “My answer? Well, have you ever heard of that filmy dialogue, asking you to listen to your heart when your mind gives up on you? The world is mine, and no matter how many more borders man plans to draw on it and divide us, we still have the same origin. Sure, I definitely have a soft corner for my country, after all, I grew up that way, we all grew up the same way and that is probably the only reason why I feel that deep inside I’m still a Bangladeshi, even though I know very little about it,I still feel proud when any other fellow mate does something great, but never to such an extent so as to detain a person just because he is from the other side of the line. No I’d never do that.
I had once told my intercultural communication professor, that I don’t have a culture, since I really don’t know where I belong. To that she replied “You have a more refreshed culture which is way better than having a single culture to follow. “ I guess, that sums up what I really wanted to say , though very vaguely written and only a fool with a lot of time in his life would read this, I still feel satisfied, just to have written everything on paper and let my mind out. Feels good.