Rabita Saleh

Jetlag isn't a pleasant experience. Falling asleep at 3 o' clock in the afternoon and being wide awake after midnight is the last thing you want when you're trying to put your life at home in order. However, jetlag can have some unanticipated benefits.

We all remember a simpler time when social media was a “young people only” zone. But then the age of smartphones came about and soon after, you began receiving friend requests from your one moderately tech savvy uncle.

Nuit Blanche is an annual night-time art festival that spans across entire cities. With hundreds of official and unofficial art installations, the cities themselves are transformed into one vast art exhibition. I was fortunate enough to be in Toronto for this year's Nuit Blanche.

Being an adrenaline junkie sometimes leads my life to be measured in a string of roller coasters. Yet, I'm not one of those daredevils who are all “rush all the time with no nervousness”. The emotional roller coaster I go through while actually riding a real one is quite the experience, and it all starts with getting in line.

No human being is perfect. We are all trying to do our best with the hands that we have been dealt. However, when people bond over their mistakes and failures a lot more than they do over their achievements,it plays havoc with their minds. Questionable habits become desirable, and self-restraint is thought of as boring. Someone needs to say it though, and so, throwing caution to the wind, here are a few bad habits that we tend to indulge in, and somehow end up justifying them to ourselves.

People like chocolates. People are like chocolates. When you don't know someone well enough, you might just mistake them for plain milk chocolate, nothing inherently wrong with them, but one dimensional in essence.

Have you ever tried retelling an amazing story, and realised halfway through that your audience isn't responding to it as you'd hoped? You remember the story captivating you when you heard it, but you've already lost interest in ending it as you look at the expressions of the people around you. What went wrong?

Sometime about three years ago, I got into stand-up comedy. I started with YouTube videos of some amateur comedians who performed at random open-mics, and upon finding them quite hilarious I decided to look into some more popular names, expecting them to be even better.

Eid-ul-Azha went by in a blur for me this year, as it does most years. Perhaps that is because I find myself quite uninvolved in the process. Having given up on the concept of visiting gorur haats at the age of nine, the only pre-Eid ceremony I have is my basic conversation with the cow about life and its mysteries.

Let's just agree that everyone has a favourite burger. Some like the classic BLT (for us its beef and not bacon), others (read: plebs) like their burger with truckloads of sauce and meat sans veggies.

Growing up is the worst. It is quite ironic how going back to the horror of the “what's-happening-to-my-body” phase actually sounds quite appealing once you are well past it. Alas, there is no going back.

Balancing work and play can be quite the challenge for those of us who prefer the former over the latter. The rush that we get from a job well done is quite inexplicable to those who don't hold the same values.

At the stage of your life when you're about to graduate from high school and enter university, you may find yourself stuck in a haze of perpetual confusion. You've just started grade 10 or 11, but your peers already seem like they have pulled ahead of you. There's a flurry of action and everyone is looking into prospects that they can cram into their repertoires to make themselves seem more “interesting”, “pro-active” or, the worst, “worldly”.

Last Wednesday, in the suave setting of North End Coffee Roasters inside Lakeshore Gulshan, SHOUT met with a few individuals from the budding Bangladeshi Instagram food blogging scene. At the scene, the idea that food blogging needs to be about pictures and stories of expensive food, was the first myth they wished to bust.

Are you tired of your dates becoming identical in flavour because they all revolve around food? Are you worried that your growing second chin is here to stay? Well then this article is for you, my slightly chubby friend; for you and your S/O.

The life of a centrist comes with its fair share of tribulations. The question of “Why people have to pick a side and then blindly ignore all other logical reasoning?” is a constant. The mind boggles at the general populace's supposed insistence on always sorting things in boxes of black or white, and then ignoring any hard facts that may influence their categorisation.

Over the summer holidays last year I had the good fortune of vacationing in Toronto, Ontario. As a Potterhead, there was no way I was going to let this chance of getting my hands on some exclusive merchandise slip by.