Its December!

“Itna shor kyun horaha hai? Kahan ho?” I questioned my friend on phone in Pakistan yesterday. “Shaadi mein hoon“, he answered. Then I called my mom and the first thing she said “Abhi xxx ki shaadi se aye hein.” Arghhh!!

What is it man? Marriage seems to be the buzzword in December. Despite the cold weather it seems that everyone wants to get married in December. Back at home, I used to skip most of the early and mid December marriages due to scheduling of exams those days. This wasn’t all that bad, some marriages are extremely boring. There are those marriages of close relatives and friends where you tend to enjoy. And then there are those when you don’t know a single person and still forced to attend (mostly because of parents). BTW, there is always a table near the end of the marriage halls/lawns where people sit quietly looking down, waiting for the dinner to be served. Those are the ones who don’t know a single soul at the ceremony and are attending by force. I was unfortunate enough to experience that, once.

Coming back to marriages in December, why does everyone want to get married in December??!!!! I remember, when my sister’s marriage date was being finalized, the first choice was December. But then I coerced my parents to change it to March using all possible ethical and unethical means. Fortunately, the larkay walay had no problems. I had only one genuine reason: my exams in december! And being the most important person to arrange things from our side I had to be free at the time of marriage!

The good thing about a December marriage is weather. Suits can be worn without worrying about humidity. I think I’m being nostalgic :S

Number of marriages in December will decrease next and the year after and probably the next one because of Muharram coincinding with December.

I know this is a completely useless post and it was just something on my head that had to be dumped. So don’t bother criticizing it in the comment. If you do know why people get married or like to get married in December, then do chip in your two cents.

One Year Old!

Shuffling through my previous posts to find when exactly I started blogging on this platform, I found to my utter surprise, that my first post is dated 27th December 2007. I’d like to thank the government of Pakistan for having a national holiday for my blog’s birthday celebrations

I had been blogging on and off on other platforms earlier, but serious blogging began on this historic day. I think completion of my undergraduate degree just before that and having a lot of free time contributed most to this activity. So beginning with an activity just to kill free time, blogging is now an integral part of my daily life and I try to update this space even when I am utterly busy.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank…:P

On a serious note, it has been a momentous journey of one year where I’ve learned a lot about web development, some PHP programming, learning about other people and yeah earning some adsense money
I don’t remember posting it here but I did get about $110 last month which were accrued over a period of four months.

To celebrate this auspicious occasion (ufff!!) I have ordered myself a gift which I shall be receiving tomorrow and then brag about it henceforth. So get ready

One last thing, a year before Pakistan was facing a hostile situation and on this day our dear nation is also threatened both on internal and external fronts. Let us all hope and pray for the safety, security, development and advancement of our country – and me and my blog

Pakistan Paindabad

[Liked the speech?]

We Can Respond "Within Minutes"

This is how the Indian media breaks the story of General Ashfaq Kiyani’s meeting with the President. Click on the link to watch the video from Times of India.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pak_ready_to_respond_within_minutes_if_India_strikes/videoshow/3878499.cms

Story Of THAT Car!

CAUTION: This is a long story written out of extreme boredom AND I suck at story-telling.

It was a Thursday night and time was not on our side, so wasn’t luck. Things were getting tougher as the deadline drew near. As I recall with my bad memory, only a week was left to finish off the task before flying out. There was uncertainty about the end but the determination was rock-solid. We weren’t aware of the time, day or night. Only one (maybe two) thing was on our minds – victory (and defeat too).

On this particular Thursday night we decided to go out to eat, as we usually did at some point of the day whenever we achieved something or failed to produce anything for a very long time. As I said, time was of essence hence eating out in least possible time was always favoured. That meant something close by. The other factor was our light pockets during those days and the debts we had taken from almost everyone we knew (I hope we returned all of them!).

So, if some of you haven’t already guessed, this is a page from the days we were working on the (second robot). I like to call that period The Robotic Age. Anyway, PNEC being situated in a prime location – Karsaz, the obvious choice to eat was Mohammed Ali Society. Perhaps, the cheapest place there was Ideal Restaurant (ideal, indeed). I don’t remember how many of us went there but I’m sure about three (including myself). The other two included Atif (the guy in the video) and Munzir (deserves a whole post for his achievements and geniuses). On that team of four, two of us had cars. That particular day, I left mine at home (because my father was in Karachi) so we went out for dinner on Munzir’s car hoping that it doesn’t stop midway. The car obliged, and we were relieved, obviously. After satiating ourselves with some nice (and cheap) food and discussing further plans on how to make the night more productive we decided to leave.

The driver (Munzir) turned the key and the engine roared. The car moved, and we were almost assured of reaching back to PNEC which was only a few minutes drive. But then Uncle Murphy had to come in somewhere!! The car stopped, running short of fuel of either kind i.e. petrol and CNG. We tried giving it a push several times, but the car did not respond as if it was comatosed (is that a word?). We shared a few laughs partly because we knew that was likely to happen. In fact, it should have happened earlier! (more…)

Down Memory Lane

Saturday mornings are invariably lazy here in London (for me). The day is dedicated to do all the stuff I wouldn’t like to do during the weekdays during heavy workload. Not much of grocery was needed today and the success of Operation Cleanup meant some free time today. Not to forget, I managed to achieve a great feat my going a step ahead on my major coursework (I won’t bore you guys with the details, for now).

So, completely free and at east, I plugged in one of my portable hard drives and started going through the videos and pictures on my mobile phone backups. I do this whenever I miss the great time I had at PNEC and those awesome friends.

The word ‘robot’ forms an integral part of my life, and especially the year 2007 of my life can easily be called the Robot Year. I won’t even give any details of that robot but due to that most of our time (4 of us) was spent in the project lab at PNEC which we had the freedom to use at all times.

I have found some nice videos of the robot during its development phase which I plan to post at some other time, but for now here is an interesting video of how geeks light up a cigarette. The location is, unsurprisingly, the same project lab. The time is probably very late at night and the action is definitely a consequence of frustration. The guy in the video is a brilliant techie!

Isn’t this innovative?

NOTE: I was forced to remove the original background sound