Race Against Time: Deadline Thursday

Since the beginning of this week I had been racing against the time. Well the thing is I wanted to take leave on Friday and that's how it started.

My boss had plans to call everybody to work on Saturday as well as Sunday. So asking for leave (making it three days away from the office) was a tough task. But I mustered up all my courage and blurted out that I want a one day leave. He first asked me why I wanted it. So I told him that I had to go to Lahore to attend a friend's wedding. Then he said that taking leave is only a problem when work is not done on time. He added that I could take that leave provided I could finish my tasks by Thursday.

So here I am, typing away at the keyboard, trying to complete my "Test Procedures". I am using the word trying since I know that when my boss will take a look at those, he will spot so many errors that naked eye is unable to see. ;-)

I am almost done. But these three days have been really hectic. My fingers try to go numb in the middle of my work and I have to stretch and bend them to prevent them from falling asleep. And then my back starts aching and my wrist starts complaining. (Hey boss, take care of the ergonomics! Please!)

Last but not the least my eyelids start shutting and my mind starts dozing off. I have to jerk myself to prevent me from going into a deep slumber.

I wonder if it is because of the load of work, or because of the continuous work, or is it because of the fact that I am a talkative human who longs for a talkative company, in the office. ;-)

A Misty Moist Morning & Stupid Male Drivers

Today's drive to the office was very tough. I had opened my eyes as much as I could but still the view was blurry. Well it was not that I was going blind (God forbid), but it was because of the fog.

I can term it as a "misty moist" morning. The mist was everywhere. It started from my house and did not end till I was very near my office. On my way there I was quite tense because of the poor visibility. It must have been just 20 to 25 meters. Every time I tried to relax a bit on the road some stupid "male" driver would make a really stupid move, and I would be on my toes again.

On my way I saw two accidents. They were mere car collisions which had completely ruined the bonnets and backs of the cars at the back and in the front, respectively. Nobody was hurt. But that too was a lesson, for me and the others on the road behind the wheels, to go slow in the mist. But oh no! How can the big male ego of the owners of brand new cars especially brand new Corolla's stand that. Go slow? Are you nuts? That's what they would say. And at the same time would keep pressing the paddle, the accelerator off course.

I for one was going slow. Why? Well I am not a scarety cat but I am also not stupid so that’s why. Also because I am neither a "male" (a "stupid male" to be exact) and nor am I am owner of a "brand new car". ;-)

PS: Don't get offended my male pals. I know you are not stupid, but many of your kind out there are. ;-)

Eid ul Azha: My Experiance this Year

It was Eid yesterday. Eid ul Azha. We went to our Dadi Jan's (grandmother) place to celebrate it. There were three goats to be sacrificed. The butcher deceived us, a bit, by arriving late. Usually he comes around 9 in the morning but yesterday he came about 2 hours late. But thank God he came. ;)

Then the sacrifice started. First it was the white goat, then the black one, and the last one had a brown coat. My sister and I watched the whole process, as usual. (Well I missed it last year when I was in UK, but now that I am back to Pakistan there was no way I was going to miss it.)
One by one the goats were slaughtered, then hung upside down with a rope on a tree, and finally skinned. Then their insides were cleaned out and they were cut into tiny pieces. I have been seeing this process for such a long time, practically all my life, that I have come to believe that if I have to do it all by myself, I will not fail. ;) lol

Then came the stage of distributing the meat. (One part of the whole meat is distributed among the poor, not so financially fortunate people. A second part is distributed among the relatives, friends and acquaintances. The last part is for the person carrying out the sacrifice and his family.) It was put in plates and plastic bags for distribution.

For the first time in my life I was helping out in this. All these years I had just been a spectator, but yesterday my hands were in the meat and I was sorting it. My skin was actually in contact with the raw, uncooked meat. ;-) heheheeee

All this ended around lunch time. By that time I was totally exhausted. I wonder how exhausted my father, mother and grandmother would have been. But even though I was very tired. I had enjoyed every moment of the day, as always. :-)

A Human Tsunami & Business Minded Kids

Just like at all weddings the spectacle at this one (the one I attended this weekend) during the dinnertime was worth watching. As soon as it was announced that dinner is served people rushed towards the tables like a big human Tsunami. Then like an army they took over all the bowls and spoons and the serving spoons. They turned into a great wall, penetrating which was a great and skilled task. Their hands worked quickly, like a high-speed robot, trying to fill the bowl not to the brim but even more, with the chicken corn soup. ;-)

Thank God no soup was spilled, at least not on me and Attiya. ;-)

The other item on the menu was a lunch box. The lunch box was a small box containing small tit bits, like a sandwich, a chicken cutlet, a cream roll, a mini pizza and some 'mithaaee'. Now one person was supposed to have one lunch box. But people attacked those too and took as many more as they could.

On the table where Attiya and I were sitting, there were sitting some kids. And they indulged in the lunch box looting routine equally. They said to each other, "Let's take 4 each." Then another one said, "I can go and get some more from the next room"

The amazing thing is that they succeeded in making the collection. Whereas me and Attiya ended up sharing a single box. ;-)

That’s not it! The kids were really business minded, so they thought of a business deal then and there. They said, "Now that we have got so many boxes, we can give it to the people who don't have any, in exchange for MONEY" I was thrilled at this. I could not believe my ears.

Now I think that maybe I should go to those kids and take a lesson or two regarding business. ;-)

Had my hands full at the weekend

It's been a couple of days since I last posted here. But the reason was that I was extremely busy. Especially the weekend was really tiring. There are two reasons for that. First I had to WORK (can you believe it!!) on the weekend. Secondly I had to attend my friend's wedding.

My friend (his name is Naveed) had invited me long ago, so I was really looking forward to attending the wedding. But this work-on-the-weekend thing was a last minute call. Friday evening my boss told me that I would have to come tomorrow. I said I will come but will have to go early as I have a wedding to attend. He agreed.

So Saturday morning I came to the office. Both my mother and my father were not pleased at this, but what could I do. After working for about 5 hours, I took leave and headed home.

From there I went to pick my friend Attiya, and then we went to the wedding. Naturally since it was a wedding and as we the Pakistanis are, highly unpunctual people, me and Attiya got stuck there and got very late. We were there well in time (sort of). But the 'Baraat' arrived late, so the 'Nikah' took place late and the food was served late. So finally around 11:15pm when the bride and the groom appeared together and sat on the sofa on the stage, we hurried to them. Said Hi and instantly said Bye and came back.

There at home temperatures were raised and tempers were lost. But everything was under a shell as Attiya was with me. Then my father and mother accompanied me and Attiya so that we could drop her off. It was late so I couldn't have gone alone. We came back and without a word everybody went to bed.

That day I knew that I had to go to the office on Sunday too, as my boss had said and since my work was unfinished. But I didn't open my mouth till Sunday morning. And then when my mother saw me ironing my clothes she asked me where I was going. When I told her, she was again furious. I managed to escape and came to the office. Here again after working for a couple of hours I took leave and the whole cycle of going home, picking up Attiya, going to the 'Walima', getting late in coming back and dropping off Attiya continued.

I was exhausted (because of the marathon of work and a wedding)! I wanted a whole day off to sleep and relax. But.....

I had to get up and go to the office on Monday again!!!!

What a life!

Doing Donkey's Work

...so it's either a load of donkey's work for me or absolutely no work (there aren't even any flies around here which I can kill during the no-work period). I am calling the so-called "work" as donkey's work because that's what it is. No offense to the people who do this kind of work, but this is just not MY piece of cake.

It’s been more than a month in this job and I have not seen a single line of code. Ok well I have "seen" code but not written a single line of it. Even my ASP 3 book, which I brought from home in the beginning, is gathering dust.

So what exactly is "donkey's work"? What have I been doing all this time? Well I have been making User Guides and Test Plans (Have made no less than three versions of each document.) And I have been testing web applications at random, without a test plan to follow, and logging the errors. Sometimes I even feel that I am doing the testing and error-logging thing on voluntary basis as otherwise I would have more time at my hands to kill.

Ok so I am not happy at my job. I am bored to death. Etc etc. So who isn't? I guess there are just a handful of people who really love their work. I wish I were one of them. I really do. Because sitting idle, trying to kill time, getting bored OR typing hard at the keyboard to feed the hungry MS Word documents is also not my piece of cake. ;-)

PS: Many of you reading this might disagree with my definition of "donkey's work". That was just with reference to my own experiences. You can tell me your own version too. :-)

Hey Fellow Cabbages!

If you do take a bold step and convert yourself into a cabbage, don't forget to tell me. My cabbagy self would really like to keep in touch with my fellow cabbages. ;-)

I'm an Official Cabbage

SO there i was merely searching for the "Cabbage Soup Diet" on google. I thought lets type in the word "cabbage" and see what happens. I did exactly that and a bunch of links filled my screen. Yes, there was the cabbage soup thingy. But that was the fourth link on the page. The third link was more interesting. It said, "Turn into a cabbage"

That appealed to me more so i clicked it. And there i was on "The page that turns you into a cabbage". I directed my attention towards the Cabbage Converter. There was a list of cabbages i could turn into. Cabagge, Purple Cabbage, Chinese Cabbage and a few more.

I chose the simple one and clicked the link. Wallah! Up came a page and announced "kazoomingly" that i am now a cabbage. It even showed me an I-am-an-official-Cabbage badge.


I'm an Official Cabbage

Now i am not only a cabbage but an officialone, but i wanna turn back. Ideas anyone!!

PS: If you wanna turn yourself into a cabbage, why not pay The Page That Turns You Into A Cabbage a visit. ;-)

Defeating an Earphone Handicap

If only the wire of my earphones was long enough to get plugged in, in the CPU as well as my ears at the same time. But it's not and I am very unhappy about it.

But I won't give up easily. I am going to go to the market and get myself a new pair of earphones with a really long wire. And tomorrow (Insha Allah) i will defeat this handicap. :-D

Till then I am going to make some preparations. I am going to download a load of songs. ;-)

Multitasking

Today I decided that I want some music in the background during my journey to the office. Since the cassette player in the car is broken (it's been broken for ages now), I opted for the Walkman, my sister's that is ;-).

I sat in the car, inserted one end of my cool blue earphones into the Walkman and the other into my ears. Started driving while listening to some cool tracks by one of my favorite bands Survivor (Remember the song Eye of the Tiger).

I was really enjoying myself. But every time I would get into the groove some stupid car would disrupt it all and make the mercury in my head rise.

It happens everyday but today I was getting a bit more irritated. Maybe because I wanted to enjoy the music in peace, or maybe I had added to the list of tasks I was performing (i.e. driving, paying attention to the road and then listening to music) at that time and it was getting out of hand.

Twice it almost did get out of hand. I had to apply the brakes by force and even that didn’t assure me that my car would not hit the one in the front. I had to apply brakes as well as turn the car away in order to save a collision. :-D

Thank God nothing happened. The car stayed safe, and so did everybody and everything else.

The second time I did that I decided I am never going to listen to music while driving again. But then a tiny voice inside me advised me and I decided, I will listen to music every day in order to perfect my multitasking. ;-) heheheeee

PS: I wonder, how many decisions have i made so far today. ;-)

The Right Kind

Remember my anecdote from my last post, the expedition to a blog sticker factory. Well i did make myself a blue, round egded, rectangular box there. I even saved it with that strange .py extension on my PC.

Yesterday I don't know what came to my mind that i thought of opening that file with Adobe Photoshop. And so i tried. Shift+Right Clicked the file and selected Photoshop from the list of the softwares to open it.

Photoshop loaded but my file didn't. And then i saw a hilarious message on my screen. "Could not open sticker.py because it is not the right kind of document."

So what exactly is a right kind of document, i wonder? Can anyone tell! ;-)


Not the right kind of document! What! ;-)

Stickers for a Blog

The day before yesterday I visited a site from where I could get some "stickers" for my blog. These days I am sort of obsessed with finding new stuff to add to my blog, but not being able to spare a second to do all the additions. :D heheheee

I was just browsing around, copying stickers when my eyes caught sight of a link saying "Make Blogstickers: Blogsticker Factory". I enthusiastically clicked it, hoping to find something interesting. But alas! I was taken aback. All the factory could churn out was a rectangular box with some text in it.

That tool did give me an option to choose the border colour, the background colour and the text colour. It also generously allowed me to make the edges of my rectangle pointed or rounded. :-P But that was it. And on top of all this, when it was time to save my sticker, it saved it with a peculiar .py extension. I wonder why!

Highly unimpressed I clicked the tiny cross at the top right corner of my browser and left. ;-)

I have told the tale so that at least people reading my blog would save a bit of time by not visiting the site. And so that I would also be reminded constantly, never to set foot in that territory again.

But the way I am, I will surely go back. I have the habit of repeating my mistakes several times over. But if you still want to give it a try, then be my guest. Here's the site address for you: http://www.blogstickers.com/

Enjoy! ;-)

Traffic Blues

After driving in the gruesome traffic of Pindi and Islamabad for a little more than a week, I have come to a conclusion.

If you want to break all the rules and drive recklessly & carelessly, these are the roads for you. If you want to surpass the speed limits, break the traffic signals, stop the car onto a zebra crossing, these are the roads for you. If you want to disregard the no-overtake rule, and overlook the white & yellow, dotted & joined doodle on the path, these are the roads for you.

Achieving all that would be pretty easy.

But in case you are a headstrong rebel who wants to follow each and every rule in the book, it can prove to be highly intricate.

To such people, including myself, all I can say is, "These are NOT the roads for you."

PS: Having no other choice but to use these roads and trying to following rules is a whole new tale of pain.