Goodbye 2014

Yes, I've been away.
Yes, I've neglected this blog.

It's been long. Pretty long. It's been over a year since I last posted something here, and although I keep on saying I'll update this more, I fail in doing so. Maybe I'm a liar, maybe I'm a failure, maybe I'm both.
I can make many excuses for my absence:
1) I had a crap phone so I couldn't blog from it. [recently upgraded]
2) 5th year of med school. Senior cycle I. HAH. Death. 
3) 6th year of med school. Senior cycle II. HAHA. MORE DEATH. 
4) My crappy internet connection at my apartment, courtesy of **********m.
5) Laziness.
6) Procrastination gremlins. 
7) My mental status. 
8) Mental status.
9) Mental.
10) Status. 

With little left on the clock till 2014 ends, I thought I couldn't let a year mark pass without having at least one post on my blog for that year. That's a little too much of a fail, even for me. At least I still have a very minimal level of standards I'm trying to adhere to..

Anyhow, updates:
-I'm supposed to be graduating medical school June 2015. I'm donezo hopefully in six months. However, I haven't been studying as much as I'd like to in the past four months, so crunch time should ensue by the fourth of January by the latest.
-I quit basketball this year :( To focus on studying. Little did I know.............
-I'm going to Chennai, India for a community engagement medical elective sort of thing in about two weeks, hopefully I can post about that if time and internet connection allows. 
-My elective in California has been cancelled unfortunately, but I'm hoping that's for the better, and there's a reason I can't fully comprehend at the moment but it'll make sense soon. 
- During my hypomanic phase [I called it a hypomanic phase because it just felt like one. I was talking and acting in a hypomanic manner, and I also did NOT need to sleep at all. I went through 96 hours straight with less than 8 hours of sleep. I had to resort to sleeping aids eventually. It was pretty scary!] I don't know how or why it happened, but I managed to do many many things! I became part of my class's Senior Committee, joined 17 clubs in uni, became secretary for a club, joined on organizing a conference, became a writer for the school magazine, AND joined the university community engagement program. Also, I got a guitar and tried to learn a few things pending actual lessons.. In retrospect, my hypomanic phase was actually really nice. I'm now in a trough though, I don't know if it's because it's new year time or everything else but hopefully this can pass. However, that's another days post.

Moving on, as 14 minutes remain on the clock till the 1st of January, I think I'll end this post here. This is pressuring me. Reminds me of that time I submitted a paper 40 seconds before the portal closed. I felt like such a baws.

And with the accurate words of AWOLNATION playing this instant: "blame it on my ADD", I bid you farewell, and wish you a happy new year. Speak to you next year!

August.. Back to the Sandbox

August has arrived, and I just got back from New York a day ago, actually (:

I have lots of mixed feelings about being back in the "sandbox" as my friend would always call it :p After California, I insisted on my parents that we pass by New York again before we go back to Saudi. I won. Lol.. So instead of going back to Saudi on the 27th, we went to New York again and stayed there till the 31st. So, my issue is that wherever I go, EACH YEAR, is how attached I get to the place I travel to. Very attached. Like, I wanna live & study here and spend my whole life here and have kids here and have neighbors and meet people here attached. New York and California were two amazingly different places, yet I enjoyed each one so so much. People would ask me which one is nicer? Which did you have more fun in? My answer: your question is non applicable, sorry :p
so they'd get all pissed and give up in trying to make small talk with me. Unfortunately, I can't make up my mind and I can't give a more reasonable answer. I JUST LIKE BOTH. They're really different. So I can't compare. It's like asking me if I like steaks or oranges better :/ Anyways, yeah, after a pleasant dinner in Benihana of Tokyo on La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills, we went for a drive through the city.. Nighttime in Los Angeles was truly something else. The cool chilly weather, the ambience of the streets, the whole setting of the city.. It isn't something you could forget! Especially that on that night, we drove through the UCLA campus, student apartments, and the fraternity and sorority houses with the huge Greek letters.. I gazed admirably at everything around me and tried helplessly to keep each bit in my photographic memory.. I wanted to study there! I really did with all my heart. Knowing that that's not going to happen anytime soon (hopefully for my residency though!!!), melancholy set in, and I started feeling bittersweet about the whole thing :( We got back to the hotel after a much enjoyable stroll around town, and somehow, my dad detected my unnerve-ness and asked what was wrong? I didn't say anything much.. Just a sigh and a hmph,, but what amazed me is what he said next. He put his arm around my shoulder and said while smiling: "Don't fall in love with California, Reem.. I'm telling you. Don't fall in love with L.A. It's a lost battle!" to which I replied.. HMPH! *DEEP UPSET SIGH* I was dumbstruck with what he said that I remained speechless :| To be frank though, that coming from a person who has studied in USC and Cal State and has practically lived in California for the whole duration of his late teens up to his mid-twenties, I think that's pretty unfair *talktohand* He got to fall in love, why can't I? :''''(
Aaah. So, yeah, New York on the way back was uber fun too.. 5th Avenue was a shoppers haven, and Macy's on 34th Street downright CONFUSING! LOL! It was HUGE! I hope I get to visit each year :D A med student needs a break every nine months now, doesn't she?

Moving on to Saudi news, Saudi has been hot, humid, and toasty :D Coming from weather that ranged from 22 to 32 (max) degrees celsius in the afternoon, I am now confronted with a forecast that has 45 degrees as a daily average :D YAY! So that's something I need to get used to.. Ramadan starts in approximately 9 days or so, and I'm looking forward to it! More Saudi news.. Umm.. I got to meet my new cousin Lulu! and I am now reunited with baby Saif, the cutest cousin anyone could ever have. Also, my close friend is leaving to Michigan to study human resources in 12 days. Only 12 days left and my friend leaves forever for the next 5 years (minus Christmas breaks, maybe.) and I can't get myself to come to peace with her leaving. I'm trying to be all happy about it and stuff but I'm just not feeling it :/ Mind you, this is the friend who I had planned my entire future with and the one who was supposed to follow our shared dream of medicine with me at the same university. I guess life likes to take abrupt turns and ruin all your prior plans fo evaaa :D I wish her future luck and all the best, even though things didn't turn out quite the way I wanted them to be.

My Delightful Summer

I'm currently writing (typing, actually) from Biella, an Italian cafe/pizzeria situated right across Virgin on the first floor of City Center in Bahrain. Today, I fear, has been a very very disturbing day for me.

8 hours and 53 minutes ago, I found out my fate for the summer.

I'd been planning to go the States ever since last November, marking each day off my -mental- calendar. As the academic year came to an end, I grew more and more excited. CALIFORNIA BABY! I haven't been there in forever and I desperately needed a booster shot. Planned take off day: July 11th. My god I have been waiting for this day since the 29th of December to be exact :D Anyway, back to the initial story.. My fate for the summer: spending it in good old Khobar. No States (for overpowering reasons we have no control over.) I've been maintaining my mental & psychological state fairly well since that had been announced. For the past 9 hours, I'd been acting pretty damn good. Sure I was sorta gloomy -and who wouldn't be after finding out something like that? But nonetheless, I'd been semi-normal.

My parents decided to go to Bahrain and tagged me along. We saw Toy Story 3 which didn't help in making me feel better contrary to what I believed its effect would be, because it just reminded me of Disney Land and Universal Studios, both in California. Where I'm not going. I'd become idle. And amazingly, not hungry :S I'd gotten a popcorn and a Coke for the movie, and didn't touch either until my mom asked: "are you fasting today Reem :S?" After that I forcibly had almost the entire bucket & chugged down my Coke. I think I thought that nothing was worth anything anymore. After the movie we went around shopping for stuff (with me being utterly uninterested in everything) and eventually we came here to have dinner. Being the gloomy uninterested apetiteless person I am, I barely spoke a word while deciding on what to eat. After a little chatting we ordered -I was obliged to order something or else my parents would've gotten extremely pissed at me. I got spinach and ricotta ravioli.

As we waited for the food, my parents started talking about their trip and travel plans. I just held the menu (yes, I did keep it even though it was far past ordering time. But in case I wanted a drink, since I opted not to get one) and read it. Again and again and again. I'd practically memorized it. Just so that I wouldn't have to take part in their conversation, to block them out. Their discussion was upsetting me and I couldn't -and wouldn't- tolerate it. 42 times of reading the menu later, cover to cover, I can now work as a certified Biella waiter :D

The food arrived, and I have to say, it was very good. Delicious. After 2 tempura prawns, one pizza slice, and 2 ravioli's though, I couldn't have anymore. And that's very alarming for a person like me :) minimal eating at a restaurant -or anytime, for that matter- has got to be a warning sign for something gone wrong. But I couldn't. I just couldn't. I tried forgetting about it and enjoying my time, but it just wouldn't happen. Aaannnddd, as I resumed writing this post in the car, my mom started complaining about my bad attitude and constant bbm use today -the latter being not true, I had my phone shut off the whole time we were in Bahrain. Most likely she meant my use of it in morning and afternoon..

Anyhow, I just wanna go to sleep and wake up realizing that this was all just a dream. Or a false reality. Or a hallucination of some sort. Unfortunately, waking up tomorrow will only make matters worse, as that means my summer days are ending and I'm not going anywhere. After all my planning, my hopes, my expectations, my everything for a half a month in Los Angeles and half a month in New York, it's all over. And its irreversible. It really is over. I have to suck it up till this summer ends, uni starts, JC 1 and 2 are over, and 11 months later, my summer starts again and I MAY or MAY NOT travel anywhere. Again. No London, no States, no Japan, no Lebanon, and no Turkey. Yay. I know I should remain positive and crap etc etc, that this isn't the end of the world.. But you're not in a position to judge me -.- so I'll exert all the negativity I want for the next year until summer '11 is here! Boo ya! Therefore, I'm sorry wall in Saks Fifth Avenue advising me to "think about smiling at everyone I pass on the street today because I wont believe how contagious it is." I just can't find it in me to do that today (or this month). Though I'd usually love doing so, my optimism has officially depleted.

10 hours after I'd found out my fate for the summer, the frustration and disappointment inside me are playing it up and are finally inducing me with a migraine.

As if I need one right now.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device from Aljawal