Another Dream

I was browsing through Guitar Noise when i suddenly came across a lesson for beginners where the teacher was going to teach how to play "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd. Before trying it out i just listened to the lesson mp3s just to see how the song sounded when being taught on a web site. (otherwise i really like the song) As soon as i listened to those mp3s i feel in love with the song, once again.

Now another item has been added to the list of my dreams and that is to be able to play this song just the way i heard it being played by the guitar teacher.

Wish me luck! ;-)

My Big Boss is Here

My "big boss" (ther CEO of the company) was supposed to come to Pakistan from USA on 26 February. And for that reason, the whole office crew was called to work on Sunday. I was called too, but i took leave since i had something planned before for that day.

Today it was the second day of my boss in the office. I had strange thoughts in my mind when i was coming to work today. What it would be like to have him around? How will i get to talk to him about my "issues"? How will he go about things? etc

I still haven't found time to have a chat with him, but its not bad having him around. He also brought gifts for the whole office, which seems like a good gesture. All the single men got ties, the married ones (who also have a kid or two) got toys for their kids. I could neither be given a tie or a toy (well maybe a toy for ME could have been good), so i was given a huge mug. The size is good. Perfectly fits my needs for a single serving of tea. ;-)

I just hope that the way my boss looked today, friendly and considerate, he remains the same when i finally take my bundle of "complaints cum demands" to him. :-D

Cough Cough Go Away!

About a week or so ago my sister caught a cold, yet again, and i made fun of her. I did it as she got the flu for the third time in three months. I said that she was interested in "fashion" and didn't wear her jersey to the college, so thats why it happened.

Just the next day i started feeling something in my own throat. Turned out i was coughing and sneezing at the end of that day myself. I had got the flu too. Poor me. Maybe it was God's way of teaching me a lesson for making fun of my sister. :-D

Anyways for a few days i took some medicine (irregularly) and had a few cups of "joshaanda" (herbal tea) to cure the cough. It was effective too and the signs started fading away. I was hopeful that it would just go away, and stoped my medicine and joshaanda treatment. *cough*

But its been so many days after that. I still have a cough. It is not painful anymore. But it is damn irritating. Suddenly, out of nowhere, it would attack me, leaving me helpless. Now the tables have turned and my sister has started making fun of me. She says i am coughing and coughing as if i have Tuberculosis (God forbid). *cough cough cough* (At least thats how they show a TB patient in Pakistani movies, coughing and coughing whole day and night, non-stop)

I hope i can get rid of this soon. Its so irritating taht i can't even talk to someone over the pone without coughing in their ears continuously. ;-) *cough* Abbu suggested i take in lots of black pepper, do gargles with salty water and eat honey. So from tomorrow i m going to do that. No more medicine for me, no siree. Just the "desi" treatments.

Lets see how effective they will be and how soon can they help me get rid of the iritant cough. Ending my post with a *cough*. ;-)

Bad Mood

Today I am in a very bad mood. And I am hating it. But so far nothing has come my way that can change my mood status.

It all started at home in the morning. Had a "tiny" argument with my mother.

Then on the road I could feel that I was more intolerant of others "mistakes". I impatiently honked the horn for the greatest number of times at various people today.

In the office I heard the news that the "big boss" is coming from USA and so we have to come to work on Sunday.

Then I got a call from my sister. It was referring to the same “reason-of-argument". That further made me mad.

Finally, I got to talk to my boss over the phone, and the "vague" tasks he assigned me further deteriorated my mood. And that was like a straw on the camel’s back.

Since then I am so “@#$%” that I can’t even tell. It’s a feeling hard to explain. Even I myself cannot understand what it is.

And in this situation I have decided to resign from my office too. I don’t know how far am I going to stick this decision, but right now I even feel like quitting. Just want to shut down my PC (maybe not even do this), collect my stuff and just run off. Maybe it’s not a wise decision. But then not everything we want to do is wise.

But I know I am a slave of this wisdom. I am not bold enough to just do it. I do think about consequences. I think about “appropriate behavior” (whatever that is). I think about ethics and morals. I think about fulfilling commitments and abiding by agreements.

And maybe a “slave” like me does not have a right to complain.

Dip Your Biscuit In Your Tea

All of you must have done this at least once in your life, that is to dip a biscuit in your tea and then eat it. Maybe you were a kid at that time. Or maybe you did it just to try out a new thing. But i am sure you have done it.

Some people associate this act of dipping biscuits, bread, roti etc in tea and eating it with childhood. They say only children do it. Some associate it with a specific region. People from "that" area do it. SOme think it is not very polite to do it in front of others. SOme think there is nothing better than this.

I, for one, belong to the group who did it when they were children. Who did it when they grew up. Who still do it. And who plan to keep doing it till the very end of their life. Because i simply love it. Can't resist having tea in front of me and a biscuit (or bread) in my hand, and not dipping it in. Who cares if a piece detaches from it and falls in the tea, creating tiny splashes. That can't stop me from doing what i do. :-)

So which group do you belong to? ;-)


PS: Well i do fulfill the association of belonging to "that" area. So maybe it's in my genes. ;-)

In Office on Sunday

Today was Sunday. Which is generally a holiday all around the world. It is a holiday here in Pakistan as well and in my company too, to be more specific. But they said Monday is a deadline, so you have to come on Sunday.

So here i was in the office on a Sunday, getting MAD and CRAZY and getting a HEADACHE. But hey, it was me who decided to work, so i have to follow the boss' orders. :'( ["Noker kee tay nakhraa kee"]

Well i am hoping that i can run away some time soon. Wish me luck! ;)

Six Strings

Last night, after a really long time, I took my dearest six stringed instrument out of its case and gently strummed its strings. Kept playing it for about 25 minutes. When I finished, the tips of my left hand fingers were hurting. But I was very happy inside. :-)

Planning to repeat the strumming-pain-happiness pattern, yet again. ;-)

....And the Darkness Spread

Well the darkness was not only cloaking the building but it spread to my company as well. After visiting my Dadi Jan, when I returned to the office, everybody was still here. I also stayed and waited for a while. And then it was disclosed that out project manager has been relieved of his duties by the CEO.

That was indeed a dark moment as I hate seeing people get fired. And that too was no ordinary person, but my PM. Cannot imagine him doing anything so wrong so as to get fired.

He seemed upset. We all felt bad. But there was nothing we could do. The CEO called us from USA and talked to each and everyone of us. He was trying to make us feel as if nothing has happened. He wanted his work done. He was gentle but he was the CEO too. I did assure him to complete my work, but I didn't feel any better.

I left the office with the rest, saying goodbye to H the PM, thinking how would it feel the next day not seeing him around.

Green Trust Tower Drowned in Darkness

Yesterday, around 10:30 in the morning i was about to send a reply to my friend Attiya on MSN Messenger when suddenly the computer screen turned black. Turned out that everybody in the office faced the same dilema of the black screen. The reason being power failure.

We waited for a couple of mintes for the power to be restored, but in vain. It never happened. I paid the roof of the 14 storey building a visit, made friends with the receptionist and talked to her for a long time, but still the power wasn't restored. The only electricity inthe buiding was beig fed to the elevators so that the people going from ground floor to the 14th wouldn't die out of loss of breath on the stairs. ;)

I decided i could use this time to do some tasks, like getting the horm of my car fixed, and to go meet my Dadi Jan (grandmother). So i fled the darkness covered building to do what i had planned. It seemed darker as it was not a sunny day but a cloudy, rainy one.

I was sitting at my Dadi Jan's place when the clock struck 2:30 pm. I tok leave from her and got back, hoping to see some light. But alas! the power was still not restored. It was told to be a "major fault" and there was no chace of the return of electricity any time soon.

So finally i left that place, earlier than the usual time, hopeing that tomorrow would bring light with itself to wash away the darkness.

The Pains I Have Gone Through Using Visio

There would be many people out there who really like Visio and consider it to be a very powerful tool to create diagrams, charts and UIs. No wonder it is a powerful tool and is quite a huge application, but I hate it. :-P

How did I come to hate it? Well, soon after I started working in it I started hating it. And my "hatred" is not baseless. Let me tell you how and why.

Well for one, maybe I am too used to making drawings in MS Word so that’s why I am not getting the hang of Visio. Visio doesn’t actually let me draw a shape on the canvas (like in Word) but wants me to first throw the shape there and then stretch it to the desired size. And God is it difficult to do that. (Could it be so that my mouse is faulty?)

Then if a file gets a bit big due to multiple drawings in the same file (let’s say up to 200 K) it becomes damn slow. Every action I perform after that takes at least 10 or more seconds to complete. (10 seconds might seem a very short time period but imagine spending a number of 10 seconds on several minute tasks)

And the worst thing is when we have to shift pages up and down, i.e. to reorder pages, in Visio terminology. Its fine if you have 10 or 20 pages in a file and you want to move the 20th page to the location of the 10th. But what if you have 80 pages and want to move the 80th page to the 10th? Or what if you want to move the pages numbered 70 to 80 to the location of 10 to 20. Believe me, its hell doing it in Visio. There is no way you can move a block of multiple pages to a different location at one time. You have to drag each and every page to its new location, and that is not a very pleasing task to do.

Maybe I wouldn’t have hated Visio so much if I could have gone home on time on the days I was working in Visio. Or maybe if Microsoft people make it better for ME to use, my hatred would lessen for sure. ;-)


PS: Ok I admit, I don't actually hate Visio. It's just that when things don't run smooth, this drives me mad (I still manage to keep my cool and stay calm). And so i come to think that I hate the thing responsible for the bumpy ride. ;-) Shear human nature, I presume. Or at least mine. ;-)

My Sleeping Brain

After hopping along some old blogs (the ones I access daily) and some new blogs I finally came to blogger to make a contribution to my own blog. But surprisingly I can't think of anything to say right now. It's not that I am short of words or stuff to talk about, but I am just unable to decode my mind blog into this one.

Do you think my brain is still sleeping? Could be so, but then how come I reached the office safe and sound and have started my day's work?

Strange!

Well I guess I better give this a thought for a while and get right back as soon as I can think of a way to wake up my brain and saddle it to work. ;-)

Solidarity with Kashmir

Today, on 5 February, we celebrated the “Kashmir Solidarity” day.

I really pray that the sufferings of the Kashmiris living in Jammu & Kashmir end soon. May the genocide end there. May they be given the right to choose what they want to do. May they be given the right of self determination. May the plebiscite be conducted in Kashmir which United Nations promised long ago.

Ameen

Mehandi Songs

Last week on Friday it was Asma's mehandi. And Thursday night she called me and asked if I could make a nice pattern with mehandi on hands. Then she asked me if I had a load of songs memorised to sing at the ceremony. The answer from my side to both the questions was No. I knew I could doodle with the mehandi cone on the hands, but the patterns would not be fit for a bride. I also knew a couple of songs to sing but they too wouldn't have been enough.

So she assigned me the task to try and remember and write as many songs as I could during my journey. I had no option but to say yes. So while packing my clothes and shoes, I packed a writing pad and a pencil as well. I also picked up an old cassette of "shadi" songs form the pile so that I could get a few songs from it.

Armed with all the "song writing" stuff, I set off. When I had settled in my "final" seat and the coach had travelled half an hour, I decided it was time to start the assignment.

I took out the writing pad and pen. Then I put the cassette in my walkman, put the earphones in my ear and pressed the "Play" button. I was expecting to hear some music but instead I heard a "click" and the cassette stopped. I tried again and again to play it but it didn't budge. I even changed the cells in the walkman and tried to rewind the cassette with my finger, but nothing worked.

So finally after about 30 minutes I gave up.

Then I tried to rely on my mind, but turned out that that too was not in full working order [as always]. ;-)

At the end all I could do was to make a list of the names of the songs and write a couple of incomplete ones. I did feel bad that I couldn't remember more. But at the same time I wanted to kill Asma for not assigning me this task a few days ago. She had to do it at the last minute. :-P

But anyways, everything turned out well. We managed to sing some broken songs for a while with the "dholkee". And then our conventional music was first replaced by the modern sound system and then by the loud "bhangra" drums which the "larkay walay" (boy's family) had brought with them.

It turned out well, so I guess it was all quite well.

....then a coincidence

That's not all. The story goes on.

I was going to Lahore to attend my friend Asma's wedding. There in Lahore another friend Munazza [she is the Monazza with a U] was supposed to pick me up from the stop.

When Munazza came and I got in the car, I saw the same lady from Daewoo bus inside. Turned out she was Asma's aunt and had also come from Pindi to attend her wedding.

So is it a strange small world or what! ;-)

Story of the Jumble

Well the story of the jumble goes like this.

Last week on Wednesday I called my mother from the office to make a booking. She did and was told that the seat number would be 9. Then on Friday we went to the stop. My mother bought the ticket and gave it to me. Assuming that the seat number would be 9, I didn’t bother to even glance at the ticket. I mounted the "Daewoo", showed my ticket and advanced towards the number 9 seat.

I had been sitting on it for about 5 minutes when I had an urge to look at the ticket, and so I did. When I did, there it was, a number 8 making faces at me, before my eyes. I was shocked for a while but then got up, found my seat and sat there. [Turned out to me later that 8 was the window seat on which I was supposed to sit, but seeing another girl on it and assuming only odd numbers are window seats, I sat on number 7 instead.]

Then there came this lady and requested the hostess to give her seat number 1. She said she feels sick if sitting at the back. Her seat number was 18. Now, seat 1 was not empty. Neither were 2, 3 or 4. The seats belonged to 4 boys who did not want to send off one amongst them to the back. Also "ladies" were sitting in that area at the back so they would have disliked it too. ;-)

Suddenly my "service provider, social worker" self offered the lady that she could take my seat and I would go and sit at the back. But she was adamant that she wants seat 1.

Then the girl sitting next to me let her voice out and offered to help. The scenario was going to be that the lady would sit in seat 1. This girl would sit with her on seat 2. The boys will take the seats 3, 4, 7 & 8. [Seats 7 & 8 were right behind 2 & 3], and I would go and seat myself at seat 18.

So for the last time [it was just the third ;-)] I picked up my belongings and took the seat 18 as my final sitting place in the "Daewoo".

A Jumble of Seats

The seat number was 9 when my mother made the advanced booking for me. It was 8 on my ticket when I bought it at the station. And the seat on which I was sitting throughout the journey was 18.

It's a jumble! Isn't it? ;-)

Blogging on (a) Notepad

I am back and have lots to tell, but this "limited" time is restraining me to do so. But I will defeat it shortly, I am sure. ;-)

I am so addicted to blogging that even when I don't have an Internet connection I still blog, on Notepad. [I later copy the stuff to my online blog.]

Even the absence of a PC cannot stop me from blogging. I still blog and on a notepad too. But this notepad is a tangible one and not the Windows' one. ;-)

While I was away to Lahore, on my friend's wedding, there came a few hours when I was all alone. Nobody was there to give me company. So in that time I blogged. I was afraid I was going to devour my notepad completely, then and there. But I managed to save a couple of its leaves. [Actually around 1/3 of the notepad ;-)]

It's a longer task to transfer blog material from a paper notepad to the online blog, but hopefully I will do that soon. Wish me luck!