Ecstatic Moment

I had the most ecstatic experience of my life the day before yesterday. 09-November-2022.

Australia is currently hosting the T20 World Cup. The trophy is being contested by the world's top 12 cricket teams. This tournament was supposed to take place in Australia in 2020, but it was cancelled due to COVID. When the tournament was supposed to take place in 2020, I purchased tickets for one of the Pakistani matches, but they were refunded.

In the first match of the 2022 T20 World Cup, Pakistan was narrowly defeated by India. Zimbabwe defeated them in the second match. They defeated the Netherlands in their third match. The fourth match was supposed to be held in Sydney. I decided to buy tickets 10 days before the game. It was a bit pricey, but I thought about having this experience. I couldn’t find all the tickets in the same row. So, I purchased tickets in two rows, front and back.

The game took place on Thursday. We used public transportation to get to the stadium. I wasn't expecting such a large crowd. There were a lot of Pakistanis at the light rail station. Anyway, we arrived at the stadium. The game went much better than expected. My children knew nothing about cricket. But they had a good time. The DJ played various Pakistani songs during the game. This heightened the excitement. At one point, rain began to fall, causing the match to be delayed for more than 30 minutes. They played the "Dil Dil Pakistan" song during this time. There was a line in the song that said, "Ghar apna to sab ko jee jaan se pyara lagta hai." This line struck me and brought tears to my eyes. To sum up, Pakistan won the match, and it was a fantastic experience. Wait, this isn't the moment I was referring to.

Pakistan had to play another match after this one, and the other teams had to play theirs as well. Because of Allah's will, luck was on Pakistan's side, and the team advanced to the semi-finals. And guess where the semi-finals were supposed to be held: Sydney. Because I arrived late to the party, tickets were scarce. They were prohibitively expensive. It would have cost us all nearly $1075. My wife said I could go by myself, but I preferred to go with my family. Anyway, I persevered and found 5 tickets. There were two tickets in section 25 row G and three in section 26 row D. It cost me around $500. There was a WhatsApp group for this match. People were selling and buying tickets there. Fortunately, I discovered two tickets in section 26, row D, next to the seats I purchased. It looks like Allah has plans for us.

The game was set to begin at 7 p.m. on Wednesday. I drove all the way to the stadium. I didn't take public transportation this time because it wasn't a convenient option for the family, especially since my youngest had day care the next day and the kids had school, and I didn't want them to get tired of catching and waiting for trains. The drive to the stadium was lengthy and congested. I was concerned about finding parking or having my tickets rejected because the other guy had sold them to someone else. However, I was able to find a parking space at Sydney Boys High School and enter the stadium with my family.

I was a little disappointed when I found my seats. The front row was next to the fence. I was afraid that people would come up and stand in front of me, ruining my experience. But nothing of the sort occurred. The game began, and Pakistan exceeded expectations this time. The cameraman approached the fence several times, and I appeared on screen a few times. A few relatives and friends called or texted to say they saw me on TV. My children were equally ecstatic. The mood and ambience of the stadium and game were so electric that I don't think I've ever experienced anything like it in my life. At the halfway point of the match, Pakistan appeared to be on track to win. “Dil Dil Pakistan” was played again at the end, and everyone in the stadium sang along. This entire experience was the most treasured and joyful memory of my life. I'm glad I got to share it with my kids and wife. They were all there to witness it. It made me so happy that for the first time in my life, I felt alive. I don't think I've ever felt this way before.

I'm still getting goosebumps and having tears in my eyes two days after the game because of this experience. The money was well spent, and I believe such opportunities are rare in life. I'm not sure when I'll have another such experience. But for now, “Dil Dil Pakistan”. Dammit. I had no idea I was a patriot. I used to believe that countries were unimportant to me. Kings and rulers draw borders to define their empires. But for the time being, Pakistan is my heart and my life.

Dated: 11-Nov-2022

Happy

I was contemplating what makes me happy while taking my youngest daughter on our daily walk today. To be completely honest, I don't know what makes me happy. I'm still trying to decide if I'm a happy or sad person. I'm not a happy person, that much is certain. However, it also doesn't make me depressed. I don't have any sadness or depression. I have my bad days.

There haven't been many occasions in my life where I can honestly say that I've been happy. The day my baby was born would rank as my happiest day. My memory remembers this specific moment. That was perhaps my happiest moment.

When I was a child, meeting my cousins, indulging in junk food and sweets, and drinking Pepsi made me happy. I loved watching movies, going on rides, and reading good books. When I had good grades or moved up in the class, I could see it on my mother's face, and that made me happy. I don't remember any nice memories from my teenage years. My adolescence was not a good period of my life.

In my early 20s, at the end of my university life, when it came to knowing, I scored the highest GPA in my class. That made me happy and getting a gold medal made me happy. Actually, my father was happier about that than I was. Aside from becoming financially independent, I believe that getting a new automobile and travelling the world made me happy throughout the remainder of my 20s. There have been a few occasions in my professional life when I have been extremely delighted as a result of a success I had: a promotion, a pay raise, or perhaps landing a new job.

My dad used to say that my wife is a happy person, and I should look at her, but I don't know if she is still a happy person or not. She is probably less happy than before.

Happiness, in my opinion, diminishes as we mature in life. You search for new things to make you happy because the things that formerly made you happy don't make you as happy as they once did.

Nowadays, I believe that anything that brings my kids joy also makes me happy. If they are successful, I'm happy about it. I'm happy when we travel and I'm happy when I see their smiles. So, yes, children are the focus right now, but what makes me happy? There ought to be something to make me happy besides the kids, so I need to figure it out. Perhaps a few interests, a few jobs, or something else that has no place in a person. I should be able to feel happiness. In actuality, I need to look inward for happiness rather than search outside of myself for it.

Dated: 02-Nov-2022

Life at 40

Yesterday and the day earlier, I was going through my blog. I proofread it, fixed grammatical mistakes, and paraphrased some sentences. I know I have stopped writing regularly and I can see long gaps in my writing. At times, I do feel like writing something, but I procrastinate. I need to be regular because when I go through my old posts, I realise how my life has shaped up over the years. How my thoughts, worries, and joys have changed over the years. How have I transformed over the years? Today I have limited time. I will try to complete this post instead of saving it in drafts only to be completed next year. I have just dropped my kids off at school and the youngest one is at day-care. My wife is at work, and I am at home, all alone. I must complete a solution pack by Friday, and I should be concentrating on it instead of my blog, but I want to write something.

Reading my old posts yesterday, I realised how much my life has changed over the years. There has been a challenge in almost every other year of my life since I moved to Australia. Initially, I struggled with the emotional challenges of being alone, being homesick, and later, I had some work challenges for a year or two, and then personal relationships and family challenges. I also realised that some details of my life accounts are missing from my blog. Maybe I am afraid of what might happen if someone reads it and they know too much about me. Maybe I am scared of what they will think if my wife, kids, extended family, or friends read about it and judge me. I am 40 now, so I think I should stop worrying so much. I should live my life for myself, not for others.

I turned 40 this year. Time has passed so quickly. My eldest is 11 now. He will be starting high school next year. I have started to notice a lot of changes in myself and in my body. I caught a COVID earlier this year. There haven’t been any significant after-effects of it. But as I mentioned in my earlier blog, the lockdowns and working from home have made me mentally weak. My not seeing people for days (other than my family) and not talking to others has made my mind dull. I may have become a bit awkward at meeting people. I also realised that I have lived more than half of my life. If I am lucky, I may survive beyond 80, but I don’t know how many years I have got. At times, I am not afraid of death; I am afraid of my kids and my parents only. What would they do without me? Over the years, my parents have been my guiding force, whether good or bad. At times, my dad has encouraged me to take a lot of risks in my life, and all of them have been fruitful financially. I want to guide my kids when they are grown up to help them in their career, personal life, and life challenges. This is the fear I have that death will not let me guide my children.

Over the past few years, I have developed this fascination inside me of living on some spaceship or an underwater vehicle with enough supplies or systems to survive. This has come because of TV shows and movies related to apocalyptic life: Snowpiercer, Octonauts, Into the Night, Lost in Space, The Island, Star Trek, etc. Every night before sleeping, I imagine myself living in a spaceship, a submarine, or an underwater vehicle. I imagine how people live there and how they get their rooms or beds to sleep on. How do they find or grow food? I think I am watching Netflix too much.

Yeah, so this is what I wanted to write about. I have 10 minutes left before I start working on my solution pack. I must fix grammatical mistakes and have to publish this on my blog. I also have to come up with an interesting title for this post. So, I am signing off for now.

I just realised I want to write more (hint: house and the world in general), but that will have to wait for another time.

Dated: 26-October-2022

Reason

For the past few days, I have been thinking about what made me move to Australia. I can come up with the usual answers that I wanted to collect money, get a foreign passport, or for better career prospects, but deep down I know these weren’t the primary reasons. The main reason for moving to Australia is something else. I should admit it now. I was angry and wanted to escape from my home. I moved to Islamabad, but it was becoming very exhausting for me due to travel and toxic colleagues. So, when an Australian opportunity came, I took it as an escape from my previous work. But now in Australia, I have been trying to escape from it and want to go back home to the same place from where I wanted to escape from in the first place, but I have not been able to do so. My life has been so much different now. I have 3 kids. My family relationships are a mess. I have made some money and a house. I am growing old and sad. I should save this topic of growing old or getting evolved for later posts.

So, my reason for moving to Australia was escape, and the reason for not going back is money.

When we were kids, we read about the perspective of life from one angle: that everything is good. But when we grow up, we see a lot of things that what we learned earlier in life is very different from those. And we come up with a lot of different questions. In order to better understand different perspectives on life, some people try to change their environments in order to find answers to these questions. Some move towards religion, some move towards other people for comfort, and some move more towards work and money.

I don't have much to write in this post. This was in my drafts, and I wanted to publish it. Maybe next time I need more contemplating before writing, I shouldn't let my post be in drafts because that frame of mind is lost when I try to complete it.

2021: A year in review – So What Now Else?

It’s almost the end of 2022 and I realised that I haven’t put down my reminisces from 2021. Let me think and write down whatever I remember happened to me in 2021.

So, in 2021, we were still in the middle of a pandemic. Thanks to closed borders and strict COVID protocols, Australia was doing fairly compared to the rest of the world. I got a promotion at work this year. I have been waiting for it for the past 3 years. And it was not an easy one to get. I found another job and told my manager that I was resigning. So, I was on the negotiating end and got a promotion plus a very good raise.

I had my parental leave pending, which I didn’t want to waste. So, I planned to take it. I had been delaying it because I was hoping the borders would open and I would travel somewhere in the world during the time of this leave. But unfortunately, borders were still closed, and my leave was due to expire in June. So, I took my leave and, guess what... I stayed at home. I watched a tonne of Netflix and Pakistani dramas. I wasted 8 weeks doing nothing, or should I say "relaxing". I did do some renovations at home, but they weren’t significant enough.

In the middle of the year, Sydney went into lockdown. The lockdown lasted for 4 months. This lockdown was stricter than the previous one. People were actually scared this time. It became a daily ritual to know how many people had contracted COVID and how many couldn't survive. There was news of new infections and new variants everywhere. This has been the hardest time of the pandemic.

In 2021, I started to realise that I had become calmer. I have started ignoring things that used to annoy me. I don't know whether it was me being calmer or feeling depressed or helpless in this situation.

In 2021, I desperately wanted to travel overseas to somewhere I haven’t been before, like Canada or Bali. I was missing home, so I wanted to visit Pakistan. My brother-in-law was getting married, and my in-laws were waiting for us to visit Pakistan, but the stupid Australian government was not opening the borders. The vaccines came and people were getting vaccinated, but the incompetent government was quite slow in its roll-out. In October, there was hope that borders might open in November. I acted smartly and booked refundable airline tickets to Pakistan. I got a good deal. Luckily, the government decided to open borders, and we managed to get onto a flight and travel to Pakistan. On our way to Lahore, we spent a couple of days in Dubai. The trip was quite stressful because of the COVID PCR tests that one must take before boarding a flight. In December, the wedding happened. My brother and sister also came to Lahore during the second half of December. All four siblings were together after almost 6 years or so. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about the Lahore trip due to the tussle between my father and in-laws. This thing has been going on for the past so many years, and I can escape from it whenever I visit Lahore.

Overall, 2021 was a mixed year. I was happy that I was finally able to travel overseas. I think lockdown did have some impact on my mental health. I got a promotion, got a good salary rise, travelled back home, met my parents and siblings, and tried to be calmer. So, what else can I expect from Pandemic Year 2?

Its 13 March 2023 and I realized that I didn't mention one incident that happen in 2021. My beloved Khala passed away. I have been closest to her among all my uncles and aunts. Her loss was tragic and thinking of her brings tear to my eyes. She was wonderful to me. There has been some awkward distance since my marriage, which I believe was more on my end. I still miss her.