Thursday, July 29, 2010

Black

Today's post was supposed to be a happy, cheerful one, but there's no way I can make it that, especially since the entire nation is in mourning and the flags were at half mast. It was a sad day for the entire nation. A commercial plane carrying around 152 people from Karachi to Islamabad (the capital) crashed into the Margalla hills near the outskirts of Islamabad yesterday. No one survived !

The site of the crash ( Image courtesy tntmagazine.com)
News channels have been covering the entire state of affair since yesterday, the image of people crying their hearts out at  the airport for their loved ones is a heart wrenching scene. There were six youth parlimentarians on board, one of them happened to be a friends friend. A newly wed couple was also on board, they had just gotten married two days ago and lived a block away from my home. I've come to know of so many people as friends of friends or relatives of neighbours who have died in the crash that it makes you realize how unpredictable death is and how your entire existence can change in a matter of a few seconds. We surely have no power over death and nature, those are the domains that only Allah deals with, But may god grant the deceased with heaven, give patience and courage to their relatives !

6 comments:

  1. Aameen. And it was really tragic =( I happened to indirectly know people on that flight too.
    =) God bless.

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  2. haaan yaar it was soooo tragic...
    btw
    Thanks a lot for joining my blog. You have made me soo happy… see :-)))))
    Do keep visiting or commenting on my blog!
    Thanks again.

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  3. Wow, that's crazy. What a tragedy.
    About what you wrote as a comment:
    US has a pretty high shortage of primary care physicians so they created these programs. Primary care doesn't pay as well as hospitalist-based specialties (as in the salary difference is as high as $100,000-$200,000 between a regular physician and a specialist) so many students (due to high loans and debt and etc) end up going into more specialist areas or end up subspecializing after pediatrics or internal medicine residency by doing what they call here a "fellowship." These primary care programs make the student sign a contract to either have their school paid for, partially paid for or contract them into working in a rural area after residency. It's not all that simple, so once you make that commitment, you're pretty much stuck. In US, the general education is in college, thus medical school focuses only on the "medical" part of things. I know, I totally understand you - my parents did 6 years each in Moscow, Russia and it's a lot harder abroad than in US, I see what you mean! But in US, if you count ALL the years including 4 years of college, it's actually 8, so by having it a 3 year degree, it's actually 7 years before an MD.

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  4. ....and now the floods my friend?? ya Allah.

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  5. @ Sana and Sidrah - May Allah bless us all ! Smeen and sumameen !

    @ Jana - Yes, its now the floods ! There's just so much tragedy around, may Allah help us all.

    @K - Oh right ! Now I remember, US has a 4 year college program instead of a two year one in most countries. And so that way I think a removal of one year from the study plan will not create much difference in terms of studies, but it might help as an incentive to students.

    @CATGIRL - I'm glad I made you happy :) :)

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