Guerilla Warfare Interviewing

Hello!

Sorry I have been gone for so long without posting anything, but I have spent a week in Dallas with my parents and then last week I spent in Chicago with my sil, her husband, and my two neices, who are sooooooo precious. It makes me want to have kids right now! The oldest one is almost three and she is so smart, mashallah. She is speaking both English and Urdu very rapidly and switching back and forth. For example she would talk to her parents and her mamoo (M, my dh, it means mother's brother) in Urdu. Then she would talk to me, the obvious ghori, in English, lol. She calls me Susan Bajji. The other one is one and she is learning to walk and basically just says uh-oh! to everything, which is really cute too. Well enough of me bragging about my neices, just wanted to explain why I haven't blogged in about two weeks. And I am probably going to disappear next week too because its time for ....

Guerilla Warfare Interviewing!!!!!!!!

This is what I call my school's on campus interview program. Next week I have 15 interviews in a span of three days, as well as four cocktail parties all on the same night (we will see how that one works out, lol). Admittedly, the interviews are only 20-30 minutes long, but that is a lot of interviews. I have already had one and then will have another one following the OCI, which will put me up to 17 for the month. Lucky me. The worst part is when they ask you if you have any questions. You are supposed have some witty and insightful questions for them, and you CANNOT ask them anything that you could learn by reading their websites. Well, most law firm websites are extensively detailed. They are lawyers, after all. So there I sit, racking my brains, trying to find a question for them that will make me look like a genius. Err, so wish me luck next week as I go into the trenches to do "war" with 15 of Atlanta's biggest law firms. Well, maybe war is a little bit of a strong word. However, at times, it does remind me a lot of Sorority rush.

Helpful hint: For muslim law students, or anyone else who is in law school and doesn't drink: The pressure at these cocktails and things to drink is pretty big, not to get drunk, but to at least be seen with a drink in your hand. For some reason, it makes people think that you are more sociable, have good people skills, etc. So the solution, drink gingerale, or sprite with a splash of coke. It looks like you are drinking alcohol and you don't have to field a thousand offers for someone to get you a drink, or asking you why you are not drinking. (Or them secretly checking you off in their mind because they figure you must be pregnant). Actually, all law students should try it, you can look like a social bunny without having to worry about getting buzzed and saying something stupid or spilling your drink, etc.

Allah hafiz for now and send your duas/prayers for me for next week.

Dallas Aquarium

This is a Giant River Otter, or Lobo del Rio (river wolf in Spanish). It is the largest species of otter in the world! They were playing the whole time, very cute :)

Keeping cool in the Dallas heat! These little guys come all the way from the southern tip of South America.

Hello From Dallas

Hello! I am in Dallas for the next week visiting my parents and having a few interviews with some Dallas firms, yes, that's right, the interview process for NEXT summer has already started. Oh, the joys. I have 13 interviews in 3 days in two weeks. But for now I am enjoying my time with my parents and my baby sister who is also here. Today we went downtown to the Dallas Aquarium, which is probably that best aquarium that I have been to so far. I would definitely recommend it if you are ever in Dallas. I am going to post some pics of the oh so cute penguins and otters and manatees that we saw.

When I was a kid I always wanted to be a marine biologist until I realized that I am completely mathematically and scientifically challenged (ahem, why I'm in law school, maybe...). But I still love seeing all the marine life, especially the mammals.

So I will try to post them, but since my parents have not entered the 21st century and gotten dial up yet, it may take a while. Everytime I come I keep bugging them to get DSL and a wireless router, but they stubbornly stick to their dial up. M, if you are reading this, I hope that you are doing alright in ATL without me. I hope that you are actually eating something and going to sleep at a decent hour, miss me! cuz I miss you.

Tonight we are going to a baseball game maybe, and then tomorrow shopping, interview on Thursday. I doubt that I will blog again this week because the internet is sooooo slow here, so see you all next week :).

A View From Above

Cooking Queen and Halal Food

So tonight was a cooking night for me. Sometimes, usually once or twice a week I will get the bug to actually cook something. Poor M, otherwise he suffers through and eats Ramen noodles or soup or whatever else I can warm up on the stove in 5 minutes. So I get this urge to cook and whenever I do it is usually desi food, which is really funny. I didn't know how to cook at all before I met him, so I basically learned since we've been together and all I know is desi food. So I made Rogan Josh curry with chicken and daal and bootleg roti (I call it bootleg because I buy tortillas from Wal-mart and heat them in the chappati pan, that is so lame, lol).

On a random side note, I read a case last year in criminal law about a kid who killed a Pakistani guy by hitting him in the head with a chappati pan. The man was trying to make sexual advances on him, it was something along the lines of whether it was manslaughter or murder because of the mitigating circumstances. I just remember thinking how bizarre it was to read about chappati pans in law school.

Anyways, back to my mad culinary skills, I also made yellow cake with chocolate icing which was a really bad idea because that means that we are going to eat it. We are always trying to diet and then I go and do things like buy donuts or bake cake and ooops, there we go again.

So on to my second topic for today, halal food. When I first reverted to Islam we were living in Birmingham. I decided that I wanted to only eat zabiha food. There were two halal stores in the entire city and they only stocked frozen chicken and ground beef...every other week. So I was eating fish and veggies non-stop. My mouth watered when I passed Chic-fil-A and Eddie's, whose philly cheese steaks I miss desperately. I literally had a break down in the grocery store one day and started crying because I wanted to eat chicken and brocoli hot pockets so bad. It was pretty hard, but now I am used to it and we have come to Atlanta, which has halal butchers with fresh meat! I mean you can get filets, lunch meat, fresh chicken and beef. Its great! And we have a kosher Publix here, pretty unbelievable, I live in the middle of an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, but Kosher is waaaaaay more expensive than halal, so I try to avoid it if I can.

Funny thing is that I have been mistaken for an orthodox Jew in the grocery store many times. The worst was when I went to the Kosher deli because I had a total craving for a turkey sub. So I go to order it and the deli guy gives me this really weird look and says "um, we don't make subs during Passover." I was so embarassed, I said "I'm sorry I didn't realize its still Passover" which made him look at me even weirder. So I kind of forgot that Jews don't eat leavened bread during Passover, duh. He must have thought I was some kind of horrible Jew. Ah, well.

Its late and time for bed so goodnight.

Sura An-Nisa

Welcome to My Blog

Well, my summer vacation is winding to a close and I have been addicted to the internet the entire summer, so I thought that I would take it one step further and finally start my own blog. We shall see how this goes :). I have not really had a summer vacation as I have been working close to 80 hours a week at two seperate internships and a restaurant job on the weekends, ugh. I swore to myself when I graduated college that I would never work in a restaurant again, but being broke does have a strange effect on one's promises. Oh well, 3 more weeks I will be back in school and I will be working myself to death in an entirely different and more enjoyable way. Oh yea, lawyerly disclosure for my first post:

This blog represents solely the opinions of the blogger and in no way represents the opinions of Emory Law School, or any past, current, or future employer of the blogger, or any family members of friends of the blogger, or any pets that the blogger owns or will own in the future (including Sydney, whom I am dog sitting now).

Now I will introduce myself and wonder if there is anything interesting enough about my life to make other people on the internet want to read it. I am 23 yrs old, getting ready to start my second year in law school, which I love. I am here in the big city for the first time in my life and still trying to get used to it. Thank god that M, my Pakistani mian, mere dil, is here with me or I would go crazy. I am a revert to Islam for the past two years which has been the most interesting, difficult, and inspiring journey of my life and I am so thankful for that. Also, I am Southern born and bred and have lived here my whole life. I love Southern culture and I am proud of my roots (but I am not some crazy "The South will rise again!" confederate flag waving redneck, although I do know quite a few and are related to some of them). So I hope to make this blog interesting and up to date and thanks to anyone who will take the time to read anything that I write.