Why so judgemental?

Source: http://thepistachios.weebly.com

A while back I grew a beard just for the lack of not wanting to shave. Someone I know told me I look like son of Osaman Bin Laden. Sometime later, I shaved and someone else I know commented that you "shaved the beard? how un-Islamic!". Some more time later, I grew a French beard like the ones the Arab Sheikhs have and I was told by someone else I know "harami harami lag rehe ho?" (translated as 'why have you put up a bastard look on your face?'). All these people I know are from different countries and different ages. I ask, why so judgemental? Could it not be that I just do with my facial hair what I like?

#PhDProblems

Here are a few of my tweets/posts related to my PhD from the last two years.

First impressions of the city:
its like nathia gali,,, with development like some tourist resort near new york,,, and the weather of karachi plus around 70% humidity, minus winds,,, rain frequency like murree... above all: the English here ;)

The first month:
Loading PhD... 2% loaded...

The tougher times:
have you ever seen a person hundreds of times and never seen him/her smile?

take the square of the magnitude of the Fourier transform of the logarithm of the square of the magnitude of the Fourier transform of the signal and you will have its power cepstrum

Period of self-pity:
you have to take deep breaths and keep pushing,,, literally while delivering a baby,,,, and metaphorically while doing a phd

two phds meet. one with a job, one without a job. the phd without a job says to the phd with a job, "burger and fries please."

Midway through:
loading phd...50% loaded! 2 years of candidature

14 Feb 2012:
valentines day message from Prof. 'lets submit a paper to a conference whose deadline is this friday!' #PhDProblems

London Called

So I'm at Terminal 1 of London Heathrow on my way to Frankfurt. The self check-in machines are an annoying addition to the already hectic airport procedure. The last thing I, being the customer, want to have to do is to enter the data myself and since the person at the desk still has to check that the details match on my documents and thats its actually me traveling on those documents, he might as well do the data entry stuff for me. Anyway, past that at the security check is what's worth a share.

In my carry-on backpack I have my laptop and a few snacks. In its pocket are the chargers for my phone, iPod, laptop, camera and extra batteries. Their wires are always intertwined in a uniquely chaotic manner. There are certain things that, no matter how hard you try, cannot be packed in a sophisticated way. As I take off my jacket and my belt and put my luggage through the x-ray scanning machine, the lady watching the connected computer screens gives it a long stare and calls someone who looks like a superior of hers from among those security personnel who are roaming about. This person attends to the screen and gives me a deep suspicious look. Now, the flight I am taking is LH 911 and although I am not an Osama look-a-like, but I tend to not shave my beard regularly and have a heavy mustache that I would like to think of as fairly cool. This time its been about two weeks since I last trimmed my beard. So this supervisor sort of person asks me if the bag is mine and after an affirmative from me tells me in an authoritative tone that she's going to pass it through the machine again. And suddenly there are three or four security personnel staring at the screen, trying to figure something out.  They are still not satisfied and one of them brings the bag to me and wears the sort of gloves that they use at a crime scene to gather evidence. She says shes going to open my bag and I respond 'sure'. She has some handheld scanning device and she scans every single element in my bag and puts all the chargers and electronic stuff in a tray and informs me that she'll pass them from the machine again. By this time, some people at different stages of the security procedure have started staring at the me; the weird looking person traveling on Lufthansa flight LH 911 who is being inspected. I'm pretty okay with everything as I know there is nothing in there that's worth suspicion. The lady is still not satisfied with something showing up on the screen. She separates each of the wires to see what the hell is showing up on the scanner. She opens the camera cover and takes it out. At the top it says GPS. Well, that's basically it, she shows it to her colleagues and says a smiling thank you and I am off to the lounge.