Mall-rat

After waking up at 9 this morning to get ready for my 10:30 class, I got a call from a classmate telling me class was cancelled! Woo hoo... Two for two. So I had an unexpected day off on my hands, and just like a good responsible law student who should have gone to the library to get work done, I blew off everything and went to the mall. I went along with Jen, so at least I got somewhat of a female commentary on my choice of clothes.

So I got my new pair of bootfit jeans that don't hang loose on me like elephant skin. I was so used to wearing baggy jeans and big sweatshirts that I forgot what it was like to actually wear clothes that fit. After dropping some pounds during the past month, my Bullhead jeans no longer fit me. Those things are freakin huge now! Luckily, I had another pair of jeans that I bought two years ago that I never really wore because they were too tight. Low and behold, now they fit. What a tradeoff.

Throughout the highschool years, all we ever did was go to the mall. We honestly had nothing better to do with our time. Everyone's been making the parallel, but law school really is like highschool. We're with the same people day in and day out, everyone gets to know everone else's business, bickering occurs, and so on. So why not top it off with the typical highschool activity of going to the mall?

So after the mall, we had a grad student mixer. It's odd, the concept of the mixer. It's more like 'we offer you free food, so you can all come together and ignore eachother as usual.' There was no mixing between the schools. We law students hung around together, the MBA's were all in their little engraved name-tag crew, and the med students had their clique. But they had snacks and drinks on the house. Better than nothing. So it wasn't until after I got back from the mixer I realized I still have a lot of reading to do for tomorrow. Fun stuff. Luckily another shortened day.

Beliefs

One of the few things I remember from freshman year at NYU was a lecture by my 'Conversations of the West' professor. He was lecturing on Heraclites, an ancient Greek Philosopher whose main philosophy boiled down to 'You can never step into the same river twice.' Essentially, times change, people change. Since coming down to Atlanta, I feel like the river has sped up. Either that, or I'm running faster upstream so the river looks like it's moving faster flowing. Either way, things feel like they're changing fast over here regarding beliefs and all that fun stuff.

My cousin in Afghanistan has a blog. Her most recent post was pretty impressive regarding love. Back in the day, I used to not believe in love. To a certain extent, I still not sure if I do. I used to think it was a big joke people came up with to justify their behavior and their neediness. I remember when I first expressed this idea, people laughed at me and thought I was just playing devil's advocate. After all, in a culture plastered with Hollywood/Bollywood movies where 'Amor vincit omnia,' how could you not believe in love?

I'm turning into a Manichaean. Either that or I'm bipolar. Some days I get up and see enormous good and promises in my fellow human beings, other days I see nothing and feel pessimistic. Sometimes I see it simultaneously. People have been talking about love for centuries without actually defining what it means. Has it come to the point where 'love' is nothing but an empty word?

I remember during my junior year at NYU, I hung around a lot in Stacey and Sue's apartment. They had one of those magnetic poetry kits with the little word magnets all over the airconditioning panel cover. I put together a sentence, "I would give up my dreams for you." I think it was Stacey who quipped, 'since when did you become a romantic?'

Answer: I didn't . I'm a bit of a cynic. Always have been to a certain extent. When I put together that magnetic sentence, I kind of meant it. If was ever truly in love, I would give up my dreams for the person. After all, when in love, doesn't the other person become your new dream? Problem is finding that other person worthy of giving up your dreams for. Thus the cynic in me. I don't believe anyone would truly do that for anyone else.

A few weeks ago, I read a small excerpt from Alan Dershowitz's book Letters to a Young Lawyer. Dershowitz claims that nobody ever regrets not spending more time in the office when they're on the death bed. Everyone wishes they spent more time with their family and whatever else. But, says Dershowitz, maybe they should wish they spent more time at the office. After all, if they did spend more time with the family at professional expense, they wouldn't have been as successful, their wife would probably leave them for the guy who was more successful. Thus the irony.

Love is greed. Greed is love. Leave it to Alan Dershowitz to come up with something like this. A little blunt, a little cryptic. I'm not entirely sure I agree with Dershowitz, but I know for sure that on certain days I do agree wholeheartedly. But I'm not sure today is one of those days.

I would like to wholeheartedly believe in love, but I'm an evil male. The hunter/destroyer part of the personality comes out at times. But are we as a race supposed to leave it up to women to carry on the tradition of love? Men like to cause physical trauma and destruction. But the power of women lies in their power to create emotional mayhem, (albeit mainly mayhem in other women's minds). But nonetheless, this is a source of concern. Yet I still get chastised for not wholeheartedly believing in love.

Stanley Kubrick is one of my favorite film directors of all time. I thought Eyes Wide Shut was a brilliant movie. The entire story is a commentary on marriage. Either you're in it, or you're not. He comments on love with some what of a hopeful and also a pessimistic outlook.

Oh law school, what have you done to me.

Multiple Personalities

I have a friend here at law school who doesn't really talk to me during the day. We have contracts together, pass each other and wave, ocassionally chat. But later at night, online, or on the phone, we have conversations. Weird. People assume different personalities based on their medium of communication, the time of day, and their situation. I undoubtedly do the same.

For instance, in my apartment, I am one of the laziest human beings on the planet. A rock with clothes on for all intents and purposes. As such, I can't get anything done there. So I come here to the library, where I adopt the personality of a semi-studious person. I actually am fairly productive here. I think it may be the thoroughly horrible white lights and over-airconditioned atmosphere of this place. It's horrid. So horris that the most interesting thing to do is my work for the next day.

I've been here since 5. I got my Civil Procedure reading done, but still have to work on my legal writing assignment for Friday. That is by far my least favorite class. It's funny, all of my professors are very respectable people. They're all powerful, intellectual, and command a strong degree of respect from their students. Not so with the LWRAP folks. The professor's not really a professor, she seems to be the least experienced of the teaching crew, whatever else. Not to mention the material is very dry and boring.

So yesterday I met Abdul Uncle for dinner. We went for masala dosa at this South Indian restaurant not far from Emory. That dosa was damn good... although the sambar didn't sit all that well in my stomach. Also had sugar cane juice and badam halwa (almond pudding for you whitees out there).

Saba (the other Ismaili girl who lives at Clairmont) called me earlier today asking if I wanted to help out with the Partnership Walk this weekend. Sounds good... anything away from campus is a good thing. Not to mention, anything that requires being outdoors before the weather starts to suck is awsome. Incidently it's charitable work too.

The Downpour

Normally I think it's kind of cool when it rains. There's something ironically soothing about the sound of rough rain on the windows. Not to mention looking at lightning is cool. Right now, GA is being hit by Ivan. This was a hurricane earlier today, but has since been downgraded to a tropical storm. Nonetheless, it's still pretty fierce. They're predicting that it'll down trees and phone polls and stuff like that. Last week when we were hit by the remnants of Frances, one of the big trees in front of the law school fell over sometime during the night. Luckily nobody hurt.

So yesterday was Chandraat, and I went for services. As I was leaving the Clairmont parking deck, I was in a bit of a rush, so I cut someone off at the stop sign. When I got to the jamatkhana parking lot, the person who pulled into the spot next to me had a Clairmont parking decal on their window. So while walking into the hall, I started chatting with her. Her first words were, "It's nice to meet you. I didn't know there were other Ismailis at Clairmont. So you're the one who cut me off at the stop sign!" But nonetheless, she seemed pretty cool. She's an undergrad living in the tower. So my NY driving made me a new friend.

The workload is beginning to suck royally. LWRAP is an annoying course. We had an extra session today that I just got out of. The problem is that we had to stay later than usual, and the session was almost completely useless. So now I'm in the library finishing torts reading. Yay.

Coldness

So Atlanta hasn't exactly been the warmest place in the past day or so. We're being hit by the remnants of Tropicle Storm Frances, and it's been rainy and dreary for the past day or so. Last night we had a minor power outage. A bunch of people overslept and came to class late this morning. Luckily, my alarm clock has this feature where it remembers the time even after an outage, so it went off as planned.

The big problem with being in the south is that they make up for the heat outside by overcompensating with the airconditioning inside. This is one of the weird places where you 'come out from the cold,' instead of 'come in from the cold.' In addition, some attitudes have turned a little frosty, but I digress.

But other than that, I got to see some Al Ummah folk this weekend. The national SportsFest was in town, so Sultan and Nash came down. Got to see those fellas as well as AK, who I don't get to see nearly enough. Also went to see Garden State with Justin this weekend. It was really decent. Zach Braff is a highly underrated actor/director. They captured the post-college malaise very well.

5 hours in the Library

So today, I finally buckled down and went to the library to do my reading. This past week, I figured I'd just do my reading here in my room, but that turned out to be a not-so-bright idea. I got my computer earlier this week, and ethernet certainly isn't conducive to studying. I also have a TV in the common room. Not to mention the refrigerator. So studying at home isn't all that efficient. I went over to the MacMillan library, found a little cubicle on the third floor, and got all of my contracts reading done. It took me 5 hours to read about 20 pages (with very detailed notes, damn good case briefs, and frequent breaks). So what prompted this sudden bout of nerdliness? Fear... I haven't been cold called yet. I have a feeling my day of judgment is coming up.

Other than that, I had a good week. Last night, section F got together at this place called the Dark Horse tavern out in Virginia Highlands. Met some people I didn't even know were in my section. Fun stuff. I also found out that the cute Bosnian girl is my lockermate... Along with some goofy looking 2L. Who would have thought they'd assign 3 people to one locker?

On Monday, when we had that mini-surprise birthday party for Malav, Naeha spent some time around our apartment, criticizing the manliness of it all. It really did sound like my mother came to town and criticized the state of cleanliness as usual. But I do have to say that our apartment is messy... It's not dirty, just messy. Naeha has some plans to bring the other girls over and do their own Queer-eye makeover of the apartment, only involving women instead of gay men.

So today, I had yet another reminder of Al Ummah. During my contracts reading, I had to brief a case called Allegheny College v. National Chautauqua County Bank (NY Court of Appeals, 246 NY 369, 159 NE 173 (1927)). About, you guessed it, Allegheny college's right to a gift that some woman gave them, but later tried to revoke. What was funny was that this lady gave the gift because of her interest in furthering Christian Education, and was very adamant about the money being used for students preparing to go into the Ministry. This lady was probably spinning in her grave this summer, that a Muslim camp invaded her alma mater.

I also got a little USB memory travel drive today! It's funny how little things like that seem to excite me. Wow, I'm a big geek.