Venial Sin

This evening, when I got home from work, I squealed shamelessly for about a minute straight at the sight of a box sitting on the coffee-table in my bedroom, because I knew that it had come from the RedHeaded Wench. Inside it were a number of things of mine that she had found under her bed, old term papers from classes I really liked, some of my awards certificates and what have you, a large manila folder stuffed full of [...]

Mohsin Hamid should never be allowed to pen another work of fiction. I get it. I get the market forces he taps into, I get the (incredibly heavy-handed) allusions to all manner of other literature, I get that it takes time, effort, dedication and some degree of talent to write a novel, be it of any length. But as I said when I put down Moth Smoke, “come the FUCK on!” At first, I thought that perhaps the reason I [...]

This is insane. I’m sitting in front of the television, one eye on the screen, the other on my laptop, feeling like a hysterical drama-queen because despite everything that I’ve grown up with in Karachi across the years, I don’t know if I can handle this. And I feel a bit stupid for being so affected by it—I’ve seen and lived through worse, and I’m fortunate enough to live in a part of town that will (most likely) not be [...]

Oh for the love of  all that's holy, Hiro will you PLEASE stop wittering on about bushido and codes of honour and all that other rubbish and just stick your fucking sword through Sylar's rather disturbingly attractive body already?  I mean, come on.  What in the world is it going to take to get you to stop time long enough to just stab the mother-fucker (but in a way that won't mar his cheekbones and brooding, sultry, seductive, miles-long eyelashes) [...]

So, I spent most of today, my first day back at work, on our internal job database looking for postings in Beijing or Shanghai.   I mean, wow. I've been to most of the major continents on the planet to date, but this was really the first time in my life that I felt like a real tourist in an alien environment.  Beijing is massive and somewhat overwhelming, hardly a surprise when you consider how massive places like Tian An Men [...]