cute lil princess

My sister takes atleast 20 pics of her daughter every day I believe. If there is an occasion, she dresses her up and takes many more. Poor kid. And that’s not all, if she finds a photographic studio on the way, she’ll get her pics taken there too. Weirdo.

Anyway, here are the two recent pics she sent me.

Musfirah is now almost 16 months old, and talks a lot. Whenever I talk to my parents on Skype she always comes in chanting ‘maaa-moooooo’ … Not really sure if she thinks that laptop is her mamoo

The kid seems to love Disney characters. But more than that I think its her mother who loves those stuffed toys more

Anyway, this was just an update on my niece. I can rant about my sister later

the “eureka” moment … almost

I started very fresh in the morning thanks to an uninterrupted 10-hour sleep last night. No caffeine was required and I was up and ready for work within no time. I eased into my chair, logged in to both my computers and glanced at the mailbox. No new mails. Good. Time to work. I was kinda stuck on creating some logical expression to be used in for loops earlier and that’s where I was supposed to start from. They say, its best to avoid for loops in hardware coding, unlike software where it makes life easy. But since this piece of hardware was to be repeated several times I was hell bent on using the loop. And why not? So I started thinking hard to make an expression which will use the loop indices to produce a constant every time. After an hour or so I finally came up with a nice ugly looking expression. I felt good. Great, in fact. It was my moment! Very few lines of code and the job done with this nice expression. I wanted to jump in joy but restrained myself and only got up to fetch a cup of coffee. While coffee was being dispensed, reality dawned upon me.

I spent almost 2 hours coming up with an expression that will produce a constant in each iteration of the loop. A CONSTANT!!! Constant means its value doesn’t change…so why not use the value instead? A constant is supposed to be .. a constant! Duhh! I felt soo stupid trying to do something easy in a much complicated way.

I guess that happens when you don’t expect things to be done easily. Sigh.

Trust in God

To completely trust in God is to be like a child who knows deeply that even if he does not call for the mother, the mother is totally aware of his condition and is looking after him.

Imam al-Ghazali

Blog, oh blog.

I think I’ve figured out why I’ve not been blogging actively these days. Phew! I had to sit down and think about the reason why I started blogging in the first place. Expression was one of the reasons…but I continued because of the fun involved in setting up your blog, tinkering with the code and those things at the back-end which makes the front better. In the past 3 months or so the WordPress codebase installed on my blog has accumulated shitloads of unwanted stuff, bugs, etc…in short, its in a great mess and I dont even feel like looking at it. The front is still cool though. The backing-up and reinstallation procedure can be painful…I did lose a handful content once so I was quite hesitant to do it again until today..Now I have decided to give it a go again…delete the whole thing after backing up…do a fresh install with a fresh new look…and restore content. Another reason why I’d like doing anything involving a computer is the new MacBook Pro which my Twitter followers are already aware of..so it should be fun. But then deleting and doing all this manually doesn’t sound as cool as writing a shell script for it that can do all this…writing the script will probably take longer than doing it manually but then the feeling that comes after doing such things is amazing

So hopefully after some downtime in the coming week the blog should be up and running..I’ve got some new ideas as well…and I’ll also need to win my old followers back  who must have left thinking I’ve died

Good luck to me!

and the fun's over

After 2 weeks of frenzied activity, driving around London and a couple of other cities in the UK with parents, having someone at home waiting for me at lunch and after work the good times have come to an end. It was fun living with parents and obviously enjoying amazing food added to the pleasure. I almost felt like those childhood days when you just had to go to school and the rest was taken care of. Sigh.

The morning began with silence today as they were slotted to depart. Mom, as usual was a bit emotional and dad was in his usual self-controlled expression for quite some time. I dropped them off at Heathrow, during which they told me not to get worried countless times. And I was like…worried about what? I knew saying the final goodbyes would be the most awkward moment where despite all control there is a chance of something happening. I successfully managed to prevent that developing drop of tear from coming out of my eye but obviously you don’t need to show them to your parents. Nothing had to be said. One final hug and off they went.

I stood there for good 15 minutes trying to gather myself and decided to go home instead of going to a relative’s place which I decided earlier. Getting out of the parking area I forgot my debit card while paying for the stay because clearly I wasn’t thinking about what’s happening around me. I got home and now everything looks empty.

At the moment, life sucks.

behind the scenes

I feel like I am on the crossroads. There are different ways and I am supposed to choose one without any help. No one to guide, no sat navs either .. just the gut feeling? I don’t know. I think its more to do with how life has changed from being a student to a fulltime employee. Not that it makes any difference to anyone but the thoughts do change, somehow. I am not talking about finances…although you do feel a bit hesitant asking dad for money but then why not? I do have a plan to get my dad buy me a MacBook Pro. And why can’t I buy it myself? Because I don’t earn save enough to buy one.

Anyway…that was getting off-topic. I haven’t been blogging because I’m occupied by my brain lately. Although I do look quite normal to anyone I meet, I feel like I am losing focus. But the that’s the problem. I don’t have any target in sight. Unlike pre-job days, where there was a definite ending to, for example, 4-yr degree. Thats the first of my problems.

Second, I’ve never lived on my own before like this. I mean, I have lived alone but then other things were taken care of. Now its different. I have to make all decisions, cook, pay all bills on time, contact so and so service for getting things done…and many other domestic issues which I never ever dreamt of doing. Not only that, my brain automatically shifts to my bank account when any such decisions are required thinking whether this can be managed..if not then how..blah blah

For example, I was car hunting lately and having no experience in buying a used car I needed help but then most of the people I know in the UK are just like me … i really had no idea how things are to be done…where and how…insurance and stuff…..

Now there are other people as well who could (and should) have helped me but I’ve figured out most people really offer words and nothing more. So to learn anything, you must be bitten, or not if you’re lucky. Time will tell how I fared but I am quite disappointed with a lot of people…..and myself to some extent.

On that note..I’ve bought a car..a Peugeot 206 2001 model. I’ve also bought a 32 in TV and ordered Sky Sports in HD in my prep for the upcoming season of sports. Tbh, the real intention of getting a TV was for my parents who are coming for a couple of weeks and would’ve been bored during the day when I go for work otherwise.

Umm…apologies to other bloggers…I am not following anyone, I just feel lost. The transition from life where parents used to guide me holding my hands and pave the path for me if I decided to choose one on my own, to where I am left to do all on my own is taking a long time to sink in.

Oh, and congrats to Safi for the upcoming marriage!

So please anyone..who may have been through this phase of life..do chip in with your words of wisdom.

PS. The Scotland trip during Easter break was fantastic. I’ll definitely do a post about it

Driving Test, Car Hunt, etc.

So my fatass instructor came on time to pick me up at 8.30 in the morning. I took the driving seat while he lit his cigarette. We didn’t talk for the first 15 minutes after which he broke the ice by asking why I was quiet today. I told him perhaps I was nervous and he laughed it off saying .. so what if you fail? *Idiot* We continued driving until we hit a roundabout…my nemesis…actually i was finding it tough to negotiate the larger roundabouts at first, but then I understood it in the end but this guy (dear instructor) always used to poke his nose telling me to do things which I was about to do…so when I was about to change the lane and get in the correct one to leave at the roundabout exit, this guy thought I was sleeping so he snatched the steering and moved it! He then exclaimed why I wasn’t doing it. My terse response was..”you dont have to shout” and then we quietly continued to the test center where I opted him to stay at the center while I take the test rather than sitting in the backseat

The examiner was rather good. The test works here in a way that he asks you a couple of questions about the car and then you’re supposed to drive for about 45 minutes on different kinds of roads. You can do 15 minor mistakes but no more than 3 in any one category. These are trivial…they can mark you for no reason at times. Like, once I moved the car giving the indicator but he marked it as a minor because there was no car behind and hence the indicator wasn’t needed..WTF? The manoeuvers part was easy .. parallel (reverse) parking and reversing round a corner road..piece of cake…another mistake was ‘anticipation and planning’ again I didn’t really know what that was. The test was quite stressful and went on to last about 55 minutes thanks to some traffic jams. I did a total of six minor faults only one of which I thought was credible. So now I have a full UK licence which I can use anywhere…even on Mars

Car hunting sucks! Whichever car I like is either sold quickly (before the weekend) or it is not accessbile. With accessibility I mean that its hard to get to that place using public transport. None of my friends have a car :\ Well, actually none of my close friends have it and you can’t really ask non-close ones for such favours, or atleast I can’t.

Just to fill in the gaps…I got my driving licence on 24th of Feb…a real eventful day. I was SO tensed about the test that I had taken a full day off despite the test not taking more than 3 hours including all the travelling but I thought I wouldn’t really want to get back to work after a failed test attempt. A valid reason, given that the passing ratio of that center is among the lowest in UK. Less than 40%! And why did I register with this test center? Because these wise people who are called friends and relatives never revealed those stats to me earlier. How nice!

And no one that I know of got it in the first attempt so I was mentally prepared to fail it and … if you don’t know … i fear failure! This fear is one thing that motivates me to work hard.

So my fatass instructor came on time to pick me up at 8.30 in the morning. I took the driving seat while he lit his cigarette. We didn’t talk for the first 15 minutes after which he broke the ice by asking why I was quiet today. I told him perhaps I was nervous and he laughed it off saying .. so what if you fail? *Idiot* We continued driving until we hit a roundabout…my nemesis…actually i was finding it tough to negotiate the larger roundabouts at first, but then I understood it in the end but this guy (dear instructor) always used to poke his nose telling me to do things which I was about to do…so when I was about to change the lane and get in the correct one to leave at the roundabout exit, this guy thought I was sleeping so he snatched the steering and moved it! He then exclaimed why I wasn’t doing it. My terse response was..”you dont have to shout” and then we quietly continued to the test center where I opted him to stay at the center while I take the test rather than sitting in the backseat

The examiner was rather good. The test works here in a way that he asks you a couple of questions about the car and then you’re supposed to drive for about 45 minutes on different kinds of roads. You can do 15 minor mistakes but no more than 3 in any one category. These are trivial…they can mark you for no reason at times. Like, once I moved the car giving the indicator but he marked it as a minor because there was no car behind and hence the indicator wasn’t needed..WTF? The manoeuvers part was easy .. parallel (reverse) parking and reversing round a corner road..piece of cake…another mistake was ‘anticipation and planning’ again I didn’t really know what that was. The test was quite stressful and went on to last about 55 minutes thanks to some traffic jams. I did a total of six minor faults only one of which I thought was credible. So now I have a full UK licence which I can use anywhere…even on Mars

Now the real deal is not getting a car but managing it with high insurance costs and those financial stuff. A new licence holder under 25 years of age is a high-risk so he gets to pay atleast 4 times more than usual. Also, there is a two year probationary period on the licence; six penalty points and the hard-earned licence is gone. So the  grass isn’t really green on this side, its rotten here but just smells a lil different.

PS. Why am I not blogging regularly? I don’t know. Just dont feel like it.

An (a)typical Day

I checked in to work today, ran a simulation which took 4 hours to finish. After the end, I was informed that the files have been updated and the sim needs to be run again – another 4 hours. And the day ended. In short, a boring day waiting for the results to appear :/