Boring Sunday Blues

So today was just another lazy Sunday, and no indication by my heart and brain signaled any excitement for the rest of the day. This was the second and last Sunday in our short fifteen day trip to Cherat Packaging Limited to impart Small Sized bags training to Operators. 

This was also my second trip working alongside the Delta Services Personnel, who were hired by our principal company, Windmoller and Holscher, to install and provide field service for their manufactured machines in remote areas of the world (yes, just 300 km from Lahore gets too remote for Germany). 

Anyway, I got up, prayed with the Egyptians, and then watched Tomb Raider, in which Lara Croft and the director combined to trivialize yet another promising storyline with undue stunts and action. Breakfast was ready and after a refreshing talk with another guest from my city, I sat down to watch the third part of Rambo movie, which never ceases to invigorate the soldier in me. Anyways, load shedding reminded that it still plays a major role in our lives, although this instance was the result of some maintenance work that had to be done and the power outage was scheduled until 4 in the evening. So I mentally readied myself to survive the next six hours alone in my room, without internet and without power, so I nice long sleep seemed the next natural step in living out the Sunday. But sleep refused to cooperate for long, and since it was lunch time, I decided to bless the nature and world with my royal presence and up I go to the hostel for lunch with the Egyptians. Fortunately for them and unfortunately for me, there is mutton for lunch, and I make do with a light lunch of teenday. So then I returned to my faithful Wither series book, which, be it workday or holiday, stressful work or lazy work, never fail to give me some quick moments of pleasure, being in my smartphone’s eReader. 

Sadly, the plot had advanced to the late levels of tragedy and suffering and my mood was likewise beginning to get depressed until, by a supreme effort of will, I forced myself to get up from the bed and step out in the lounge and grab a cup of tea.  Since the guests living in the room adjacent to me had invited me to go with them to collect their clothes at the GIK laundry, I mentally got ready to go for an evening of enjoyment. So it was that I found myself at the back of this double cabin pickup zooming through the two way roads of the Tarbela dam country side and the locations of Gadoon , Topi and Swabi slipping by our field of vision. 

Come the campus and my spirits were already lifted, the university atmosphere is a unique and puzzling place, where in if you study there you never seem to notice the mundane beauty of nature, yet when you come as someone who doesn’t belong, the university holds a whole lot of pleasant experiences. Starting with grabbing a cornetto bar from the shop, I proposed a walk to the guestrooms towards the hill, which turned into a photowalk of our own selves, and culminated in a visit to the library by my fellows. Afterwards we came back to find a pleasant group of students illuminating the atmosphere by their colorfulness and innocence, wait. That does not seem right. No. It does. Really, I had begun to feel old watching these school kids, for that is what they look like when you have graduated two years ago from the bachelors program. 

Anyway,  the kids notwithstanding, we decided to elongate our stay a little bit by ordering the chef’s specialty of zinger roll platter at the newly opened restaurant on the uphill marketplace (my own jargon, there is nothing such as that for Gikians!). The platter was accompanied by lively chatter and hustle bustle by the college students, including the sports lot who always make me look positively to what life has to offer. Finished with our roll platter we had a chat with the amazing tea maker, who makes tea by assimilating air pressure in the tea, thus successfully creating the effect which the peasant tea makers achieve by throwing the tea from up high by stretching our arms back in the tea pot. The result of such activity is to make the tea frothy and creamy, although the use of both of these adjectives indicates that the resultant tea is more an illusion of their literal meaning than the actual stuff. The GIK trip culminated, we returned back to our abode for the remainder of the week, where I looked forward to the reading the Sunday dawn, watching, and not listening, the PSL match between Karachi Kings and Peshawar Zalmi (way to go smith, that was some innings!) like a proper seasoned oldie. Oops I need to get my act together and write a blog about this. Gotta go, bye!