Detour: How to ace a blind date

Here are things I wish someone had told me about blind dates aka people creating situations where you have to make conversation with the guy in the suede jacket with elbow patches. Number one: I need to stay away from anything suede. Which is funny because all I wanted when I was 12 was a brown suede jacket and skirt combo. Number two: Leave your sense of humour at home.

It's funny, all your life you are told to have a sense of humour about everything from the mean girls in class boycotting you for an entire year to losing the love of your life to gaining 35 pounds. So that's what you do: you build a whole personality that laughs in the face of adversity and cellulite. People love it. Your friends love it, and your mom tells everyone what an epitome of strength and good humour their kid is. That is till you have to meet and greet with a boy you did not grow up with, who is not already madly infatuated with all your charms and fart jokes and thinks you're actually kind of an idiot. Suddenly you're standing on the side of the road, rain fallin' on your shoes, wondering how can this guy not love me already?

This entire year has been a race to meet my future husband before 30 comes calling. Okay, it was kinda like that, and it was kinda people that other people thought I'd really hit it off with, and frankly I was tired of saying no all the time and sounding like a bizarre cat-lady type telling everyone 'I'll meet him when it's time!' Just a heads up - this is a race that 30 won. I did meet some spectacular people though, who made great fashion choices and asked me inappropriate questions about my fitness routines. However, nothing prepares you for that first meeting, where you are trying to get conversation going because if you don't, you may have to stab yourself with a fork just to see if you're still alive. Here's a few observations you might find helpful.

• Arrive early so you don't have to worry about making an entrance, and keep your car handy, if there was no Batmobile, how would Robin whisk Bruce Wayne away from painful dates? I know nothing about Batman beyond the cartoon series, and Val Kilmer telling Nicole Kidman, 'Chicks love the car.' The '90s, what a blast.
• Bring a friend. This doesn't count if your friend is also his friend, because he will also bring a friend and they'll all know each other and...
• Bring a book. All these people who know everyone except you on this 'date' will have conversations that exclude you, and tell you afterward you din't seem into their very eligible friend. You might as well take this opportunity to read one of those supremely difficult Russian dudes. I recommend Dostoevsky.
• Try not to laugh out loud when your friend texts asking you if the 'douchy side-friend' is there. You'll end up laughing in the middle of the douche's loving stories about your 'date' crashing his car. 
• Five months on, try to hold the urge to put the word date in quotes and air quotes everytime you talk about it. 

I know, you're probably thinking I had no sense of humour about this to begin with. I did! It's just hard when someone you didn't really want to be introduced to in the first place completely wins you over by being smart and funny, and then politely, ugh, rejects you. You get over it in, oh about a few months if you're me, which you're probably glad you're not right now, and suddenly find the humour in the situation.

The only thing I'd like to point out is, I tried. Work or love, I tried, and somehow, even though I'm not acing anything just yet, it just feels like I might. Eventually.

Living theatrically: How to ace a job interview

My lungs feel like they're about to explode. These are the worst moments I've spent in a faux suede chair, ever. On the other hand, what did I expect? Faux suede isn't exactly made of win. Waiting in a room full of other job hopefuls isn't made of win either, it's made of courage. Yes brain, it's made of courage, this is Sparta, now shut it.

What? Did I just say job and hopeful? Am I actually overcoming the Stockholm Syndrome that binds Fareeda and myself? Why, I think I just did. It's good stuff. I may write a book about how brave I feel as I step into a world where companies feel five interviews for one position are reasonable. Right now though, my lungs are giving way. I can't breathe. This is worse than waiting for a boy to call you. Text you. Follow you on Twitter? I don't get it. I don't get the very modern rules of this modern world, and my etiquette on any given occasion has been falling short of desirable lately.

Maybe.

It's been about a year since I sat in on that meeting with BZ and the Metro crew, and it feels as though nothing has changed, but also everything. I've been out on three blind dates for one, with three blind mice. One of them had actually escaped Karl Lagerfeld's experimental fountain of eternal youth experiments. That is the only reason I believe he thought it was okay to ask me if I watch my weight because women tend to get 'too comfortable' once they settle down. The brutal lab tests. He wasn't a bad sort though, for a blind mouse. Ha ha! Oh this pain when I breathe in...no amount of laughter will make it go away.

A man rushes into the lounge, waving around a piece of paper. "Zai-nab?" he calls, "Is Zai-nab here?" I nod at him and get up. We have only known each other about two seconds and he already can't be bothered to pronounce the simplest name right. It's okay. Sparta.

"I see that you have applied for one of our writing positions," he says, frowning at my CV as if he cannot figure out why there's like, so much stuff on one piece of paper. "But you've studied photography, is that correct?"

If I've learnt one thing in the last few months, it is this: There is a time and place to be a smartass. This isn't one of them. I need to impress this man, with, if nothing, then my ability to hold a sane conversation with a functioning member of society. Another functioning member of society.

"Yes." Short and simple, like the little black dress. It's the best analogy I can come up with on the spot to convince myself of my answer's effectiveness.

"So...why do you want to write and edit, all this publishing-print stuff?" he looks very, very confused. I want to help him find a way out, it's the number one secret to all my successful human interactions. I like helping people. This is exactly why my third blind date, Hammad, found me so riveting he refused to call me after weeks of getting to know each other over our hatred of vampires. I try not to think about it. It was not my shining moment, to paraphrase musician and great mind of our times, Hash.

"I love to write," I tell him, "and I adore editing." My interviewer is all eyebrow of skepticism.

"Yes well. Well, do you have any questions?" he asks.

I want to throw my hands over my face and sob. No, I want to tell him. This is my five thousandth and first interview with you guys, I have no more questions. I want answers. Answers, for the love of Suri Cruise's gold stilettos!

I give up. I curl my mouth and shake my head. I can't speak anymore. He reads me my rights should I win this job. I smile and thank him and tell him it was great meeting him. I walk out, a cramp in my side, my lungs rattling against my ribs. Some people would throw up, I only do that when I'm excited. This was not exciting. I fish out my phone and text Yasmin.

Get thee to the nunnery or whatever

It’s Monday! Or rather the end of Monday which I am welcoming with open arms, as usual. The end of Monday means the rest of the week can’t be any worse than the day that has gone by. Kind of like when you have cramps and you think ‘okay, so this hurts but at least I’m not pregnant with a two-headed baby.’ Which, if I was, would be pretty cool because it would be like that story in the Bible about when Baby Jesus was born. And it would be ironic, because a two headed baby is exactly what I have wished on my ex-boyfriends, Ali, Ali and Ali. Yes they were all called Ali. I’ve never met an Ali I didn’t like (at first). This is probably why amma always tells me not to wish ill on others, because it comes back to you. She also says I will be married within the year, and that my pictures never get picked up by National Geographic magazine because they are too broody. (P.S. How can a shot of lions at the zoo be broody? It’s just lions; I am just a wildlife photographer, isn’t my job to document animals and nature as is?)

Suffice it to say, I take everything my mother says to heart, with a pinch of salt. Which means whatever. Basically I end up high-fiving Yasmin every time Bosszilla can’t make it to work because she has ‘a strategy meeting with key players in the industry’, but then take my high fives back because it’s rude to be happy about someone else having to work really hard and as it will come back to me in the form of …my own intense concept development meetings which are actually just cocktails with my friends?

Yes, I hardly know what I’m talking about, most of the time. But I gesticulate a lot and use words like gesticulate a lot and people seem to think I know my shit. That’s how I got through studying photography at school for four years. I would take pictures I liked and then plug in a concept somewhere and get standing ovations. Sadly the SO’s were always for the concept and never for the pics, which were always “very emotive” but too “obscure”. But as I always say, at least I got my degree. Of course back then I was going to take on the world with my tremendous, artistic take on Pakistan’s natural resources and urban wildlife. Now I have a take on anything but. Mostly my take is on severely important people like Justin Bieber and how to get great hair like his. Sometimes it’s about what cut jeans are totally in vogue. Other times I like to stretch myself and ruminate on the finer points of being married to a Scientologist. Basically, it’s life at Metro.

In case you don’t know what Metro is, may I please rent out some space under your rock? Everybody knows Metropolitan, the magazine that feeds on fashion and creates pink cloud shaped, gold-dusted stories of grandeur about it. Bits of it dabble in music and performance arts, and a slummy little space is devoted to comment pieces on celebrity gossip. Which brings me to my new role in the world: gossip um, journalist. Occasional commentator on whatever. When it comes to where I stand in life, you will find me using the term a lot. It rolls right off the tongue and can stand for you know, whatever. Everything and nothing. Photographer and voracious sleazy tabloid reader. Dying to put on a skirt and go dancing but can’t miss reruns of How I Met Your Mother.

So I end up doing whatever. In work and in life: whatever.

I ended up at Metro as a way to make some money while I waited for Nat Geo to recognize my genius. Or for someone to commission me for a BBC documentary. Sadly neither has happened yet. On the plus side I get paid by the 5^th of every month and am totally up and up on who is hooking up with whom and also what Ted Casablanca thinks about it. One of my secret desires is to be Ted Casablanca. When I was a kid, I always looked up into starry nights and prayed to god to let me be a gay gossip columnist when I grew up. So life is good. I could well be on my way to become the first Pakistani paparazzo. At least I’ll be able to break out my camera every once in a while then. Right now after a busy day of sulking at my desk as I sift through all the tabloids online and in person, all I want to do eventually is drown myself in a tub of chai and sorrow.

Today for instance, had been meticulously chalked out by Yasmin and myself. Meeting at 12, over at 1, back to work by 1:30. What happened ultimately was meeting at 12, Bosszilla shows up at a little after, and meeting goes to hell in a pretty little clutch. Okay so I can’t be all martyr like about this one. Yasmin did all the talking. Mehreen and I pretty much spaced out and played a mental game of chess. At least that’s what I think Mehreen was doing because she was intensely staring into a space just above her knee.

Anyway, Fareeda, or BZ as we very affectionately call her, managed to drag the girls into her lair of smoke and vagueness around 2 p.m. at which point I decided I needed to finish my piece on what I think the RPatz and Kristen Stewart relationship means for the relationships their fans are in. It’s a very serious piece written with a totally serious face and I got quotes and everything from a behavioral analyst. I might have been voted worst girlfriend ever and forever more by the three Alis, but I can wax eloquent about other people’s romances at length.

But life isn’t just about Metro and Fareeda, although those are the top two things I dream about at night. Mostly life is about regrabbing that plan in my head I had of who and where I want to be. This painful question was posed to me at a party recently. Where do you see yourself in five years? Instead of saying, whatever, fuck you for asking such an unimaginative question, I laughed and said I don’t know. Wherever life takes me. Like life is a big adventure and I’m Jim Corbett. Just out hunting man eating tigers in Indian jungles.

Truth is though, I don’t know. I don’t know about so many things that it scares me. At 29, I should have a better answer than I don’t know. I planned for every eventuality in life early on, except for this one. I chose an alternative career incase Nat Geo never comes calling and I was always aware that circumstances change plans. I just never knew that the last week of 2010 would throw me deep into the bowels of introspection and make me climb out all uncertain about what exactly it is that I want to be doing. I still want to be Pakistan’s Ted C, and I still want to be lying on my stomach trying to get one good shot of migratory birds that gather around puddles in Phase 8, but there is something more I need to be doing. I just wish I knew what it was.