High on baking....

Its been quite some time since I last sat and scribbled some thing new.... Guess the weather is taking its toll on me....From the never stopping, on going, pulsating, vibrating, and exciting, not to forget hot and humid Karachi to the spine-chilling, cold, gloomy, quiet Toronto-the difference speaks for itself....Just sometimes one has to decide, based on not what the heart says (Yes in my case its sometimes) but what the mind says or better yet what some one, who is a piece of your heart, wants....for no rhyme or reason of your own!

Karachi

Toronto

Here I am braving the temperatures, way below the freezing mark, waiting just to be back..... And before I start again on Karachi, or some tweet distract me or my phone rings, let me just stick to what I planned.... 

I had never been a baking person...Never loved baked goodies, never felt like doing it myself.... And then I met this woman....who was high on baking...She WAS a friend...Mind the WAS! She would bring me amazing baked stuff, and would talk about baking all the time. She always wanted to join these cake decorating classes that another friend of hers had gone to, and she was all ga-ga about it. 

One of the first cakes-Made for a surprise bridal shower

Then one day she called and asked me to join the class with her. In fact she told me that I have to. Being the kind of friends we were and just to try it out, I enrolled for the class, shopped enthusiastically for the basics. Found out just days before the first session that she had to leave for UK because of some emergency. Without much of a choice, I attended the first session, only to fall endlessly in love with this new form of art, so much so that even after two years, I am still looking for new classes, new designs and an opportunity to learn!

I remember the first time I baked a cake, it was over-baked, and hard and lacked this thing called "taste". Same goes for the first cake that I iced and well "decorated".... Duhhhhhh!!! Horribly sweet icing, unrecognizable pattern though I used a stencil to copy it and most of all-even I couldn't tell if it was a circle or an oval shaped cake.

Well I got better at decorating out of my pure interest- And now I had this new issue: I was a soon-to-be pro at decorating but horrible at baking!

Cupcakes:)

This time around though, I could not go to any school becasue of time and commitment issues. So I thought of giving it a try at home. And as Aristotle said “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” 

So I just practiced, not skipping a single opportunity to bake, treating every one around with my baked goodies on birthdays, holidays, Eid, Christmas parties, Easter, and what not, even without being asked for it.

Asim Jofa inspired cupcakes

Well, it worked. It worked a great deal to help sharpen and improve my skills. And two years later, I bake, and I get paid, and I get paid fairly good. Good because I can buy new decorating stuff, try new moulds, indulge in expensive brands for ingredients and so on... I bought a pantry exclusively for my caking stuff, but now one entire room is already spilling and I need more space...My teacher always says "When you become a cake decorator, you become a hoarder." And I guess rightly so. 5 to 6 different tools to make one single petal of a flower. Visualize for a minute those multi-tiered cakes and fancy cupcakes and then imagine the tools and material required for each. 

Alice in Wonderland Cake and cupcakes

Baking and decorating for me is now more of a passion. When I am busy, am all drowned in flour, tinted in colors and I work straight 16 to 20 hours, sometimes even more. But end of the day, its the result, that custom designed cake, that gives me the sense of owner ship of each master-piece. Makes me high-it does!

Love it!

VCCCP Annual Vintage and Classic Car Show 2013

Somewhere above Canada

As you enter....

Alongside lake Ontario....

SkyLine Downtown Toronto

Alice In Wonderland

Amber`s Sweet Spell

Power Puff Girls Cupcakes

Power Puff Girls Cupcakes

via  

Amber's Sweet Spell

Direct dil say....

I felt like this some months back, when I was in a limbo, trying to deny a fact, while it remained one. and I just felt it now, right now. As if someone is holding my heart and just crushing it in the palm of their hand.

Life has always been like this.... And I am sure all of us experience it that way.... The first breathe we take, is so uncertain. Would it go on? Would it stop? The first step taken as a toddler, is never certain-one might trip, might fall; still it is taken. The first attempt to run, sit, stand, write, read, laugh, swim, drive, jump, fight, hit, punch, love- the list goes on... The uncertainty continues...so does our voluntary and involuntary actions....Not knowing the results, we see light at the end of the tunnel in our own respective way and we continue this journey, to go on all our lives.

For me, I've always seen the glass half-full!! Or say FULL. In the worst of situations, I've pulled myself together and hoped for things to get better...And they did!! Exams, work, personal matters, matters of heart-everything! I remember at work when we were about to conduct a workshop and my colleagues would freak out on the low attendance, I would tell them "Ho jaega" (We'll do it) and they would ask "How can you say that with just a day left?" and I would reply "I don't know" . And the Sunday morning, my boss would ask, "What did you do?" I didn't know. I still donot know.

May be its my utmost belief in God, may be the vibes of my positivity attract all the other positive auras, aur may be its just sheer luck, time after time- I don't know!

All I knew then and all I know now is that if you really want something from the core of your heart, you get it. The path may be difficult, the signs not clear, you might have second thoughts, the time not defined-however if you know what you want and how bad you want it, the key is to just holding on to it and not stepping back, come what may!

For one, I don't and will never step back from what I desire. God has always been kind. He can't not fulfill my dream!

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

― Shel Silverstein

You are sleeping....

And when I tell'em I am a hypnotherapist, the first question that pops up is "Can you hypnotize me?"

Well yes I can, but why??

I come across people every day, and regardless of their gender, faith, education and background, all equally fascinated by the mere fact that I hypnotize people for a living. And while they question, I can of course see the visuals going through their minds: a pendulum, a couch, some invisible rays, perhaps some music and a dark room. Kind of how it used to be in ancient times and kind of what we can still find happening in vintage pictures of Mesmer.

As ancient as the method is, so are the myths attached to it. For most hypnotism is just a mode of entertainment where by the hypnotist amuses the audience by pricking needles into the hands of subjects without anesthesia or by turning them into wooden planks-either way using a pendulum to hypnotize!

Yet the fact remains that hypnotism is widely used for curing all types of phobias; from the fear of height to the fear of being alone, the anxiety of exams and the nervousness of a job interview, from quitting smoking to losing weight. Trust me there is a huge list of things people suffer from, which doesn't even qualify for being published here. And 90 percent of the time, the pendulum is NOT used. Its only words; the right words that leads first into a trance and then the therapeutic procedure. My own pendulum hides happily and snugly in my handbag as a souvenir.

When we spend most of our days in a certain environment, it slowly grows over us. So has Hypnosis grown on me. I remember attending the first workshop of Hypnosis years back, the little details, when I discovered I am a stage 6 subject (Subject for deep Hypnotism); when I witnessed a charming young lady getting rid of her fear of climbing stairs through "Swish Pattern Technique". When I saw the pain this boy went through while going through Age Regression. So much so as now I talk, walk, eat and even sleep in it.

Since then it had been a never ending journey. I did many intensive courses at the prestigious National Guild of Hypnotists, USA, being called "Baby Hypnotist from Pakistan" as one of the youngest hypnotherapists there. Then NLP further improved my understanding of it as to me NLP is a better and more refined version of Hypnosis. Of course I cant ask every young man who comes my way to close his eyes and lie down on the couch. However I can definitely "Meta-model" and get to the reality of his claims. I can definitely tell when one is being fictitious or in simple words lying or when someone is quoting facts.(Though at times all of us want to believe what we want to and not what it really is) Yes Hypnosis and NLP have definitely polished my skills: communication, control, management. 

Every day so many new cases, stories, every one new from the other, generally relationship problems deep rooted in forms of fears and phobias. People desperately trying to look for answers, way outs, solutions. I see studs and hunks crying like babies, dolls bursting with anger, even tweens and kids fighting their own Brutus'. This battle within breaking them apart.

And in all these years, I've learnt that "being happy" is a relative term. We all have our own shades of glasses that we put on every day and view the world through them. For some the world is blue, for some yellow, for others red. And so sometimes "being happy" comes in yellow, and other times in green. The key is to find your own color of happiness-what ever it may be!

Did someone say Biryani??

After too many good reviews, an article in Express Tribune and then too many tweets referring to that article, I pushed my friends last Sunday to finally eat at BOTS. We reached reading all the rave reviews. Unfortunately the people with me, both of them are not into sea food, which I realized after reaching there. 

The first thing I liked was the real Awami or say dhaba touch of the place. The chairs are set on the pavement, fully loaded with fresh air;) 

We ordered a boneless chicken biryani, Fish fried, chicken malai boti, aaloo dossa. The dossa was the first to come. I did not get to try because I wanted to keep my hunger alive for Biryani:) My friend who ordered liked the taste though but the texture somewhat lacked, to which I reminded that this is BIRYANI of the seas and you should have ordered what the specialty is.

Then came the fried fish-excellent texture, great taste and fresh! The chutneys that came were also perfect.

The biryani-ahhhhh. Though very different from the typical deghi biryani that we get at Student's or Food Centre, it had a different taste; spicy enough for a jolt to the taste buds. It was fresh as were told it was just brought in right then. Hot and spicy  and of course delicious is the word.

I didn't feel like trying the malai boti as I got too full of the biryani. Our server did mention that their specialty is the Prawn Biryani. I was also dying to try the Tsunami Prawns but like I wrote; my non-sea-food lover friends!! For sure I will be there with some who have a taste for sea food.

The best of all was as we finished, the owner of the place Syed Ali Raza Abidi, came to us and asked if everything was ok and if we liked the food. Personal touch matters-for sure. All in all a 4.5 score out of 5:) Worth all the reviews and tweets!!


Well I did make a mistake. While I was busy gulping all the biryani and fish in one go, I somehow forgot to click!! And that gives me even more reason to try BOTS again soon, that too for Prawn Biryani;of course photographs too!!

Candle vigil for Malala Yousafzai at Karachi Press club