The Social Event of the Year

APPNA stands for the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America. My dad is a lifetime member. To the average American person, APPNA sounds like a really lame organization for old people (like the ACLU or something), but it is really so much more.

Every year, APPNA hosts an annual conference in a big city like Chicago and New York City during the fourth of July weekend. All the old, foreign doctors bring their hot, young teens and twentysomethings and their equally hot, well-preserved wives (I call them "hot aunties"). APPNA banishes the old doctors to CME conferences which allow my add to get a tax credit for the vacation (who can resist a tax deduction?).

The wives all magnetically gravitate towards the hotel basement, where the annual bazaar is set up. For the Pakistani trophy wife, this bazaar is the equivalent to the a jihadist's heaven of 79 virgins and fountains of wine; it is filled with gold jewelry and diamonds and expensive Persian carpets. There is so much bling in this bazaar that even someone as pimped out as P. Diddy or Russell Simmons would be impressed. Usually, my mom disappears into the bazaar early on, and she only reemerges when she has huge, blingy jewelry that she claims will be passed onto me when I get married.

APPNA is more than just bargaining for diamonds and presentations on diabetes - so much more. For loser Pakistani kids, it is the social event of the year. It is almost like our proms as many of us Pakistanis didn't make it to our own because our parents were afraid of the corrupting influences of dances on the impressionable Muslim mind. Many kids only have one thing on their mind - hooking up and/or marriage. The APPNA lobby is the sociological site of the elaborate mating ritual in which guys and girls check each other our from a distance and then consult close friends on the hotness of this or that guy.

To an average reader, APPNA sounds like a really shallow event that is just an elaborate show of conspicuous consumption of Pakistani people; well it is, but I ain't going to lie - it is still super fun. Here are some things that happen every year:

1. Invariably, you will see the girls wearing clothes that you saw Lindsay, Paris, and Nicole wearing in last week's US Magazine. That is how en vogue APPNA is. For example, I saw that ugly leggings under dresses trend, the super long necklace trend, and the patent leather heels trend all weekend on every single girl there way before it showed up at your friendly, local mall.

2. Everyone (even guys) is super dressed up even though they are just going to stand there in the lobby and stare at each other rather than engage in real conversations about real issues.

3. Ever year, my friends and I always try to leave the hotel by making elaborate shopping plans. Ever year, this never happens because we a) take forever getting ready, b) are too obsessed with looking at other people in the lobby to move, c) follow our moms in the basement and are too mesmerized by the sight diamonds and pretty people to leave. It's as if the hotel prevents people from leaving via black magic or something unseemly like materialistic capitalism.

4. I always meet some really weird people. One year in Orlando, I met this guy named Ashee who really loved outdoor sports (which was already weird because Pakistani people hate nature and sports, generally). Anyways, when we went to MGM Studios, Ashee was the epitome of prepared for the extremely sweltering Orlando weather; he brought a backpack with him that had a built-in water bottle, complete with a dorky looking straw that he pulled out whenever he needed a drink. Needless to say, while my initial reaction was to make fun of him for this inherently dorky move, he didn't have to pay $6 for bottled water like the rest of us did.

5. No one ever eats. My friends (nameless friend 1, nameless friend 2, and Raabia) and I are all too busy staring at people in the lobby that we fail to remember to eat. Also, eating is for fat people, and any good APPNA girl is suffering from anorexia throughout the year or at the very least just for that weekend.

--By Mariam, who wishes her "nameless friends" would get over their internet phobia so that she would look like she had some friends.