Friday 29 August 2008

Lack of Tolerance

I have noticed yet again that how intolerant people we are turning into. The intolerance is seen everywhere, including the cyberspace. I have recently started visiting the Islamabad blog on 'Metblogs' and couple of times i leave my comments there as well. While putting my own comments there, i read what others have written. And i have come across 'flaming'. One person writes one view point. The other ones who disagree to that either use foul language to describe their views or try to impose their thoughts on others. No two people are the same, so how can the point of views be identical? Why can't we be more tolerant towards others' point of views? Nobody is asking us to start following those, but at least we can give others some breathing space. Now can't we?

Thursday 28 August 2008

Cycle of Life

This is how our life cycle is. There is a time when we are all set to debut in this world. Then starts are ascent and we reach the full bloom. After some time we find ourselves perched on the verge of getting perished. And finally we come face to face with our demise.

Cycle of Life

See how beautifully this has been captured in this one picture. :-)

Potato? Drumstick?

So who can spot the drumstick in all these potatoes? ;-)

Potato Drumstick

Saturday 23 August 2008

Tragic Blast in Wah (August 21, 2008)

And just when i thought that Musharraf's resignation would bring a breath of fresh air to the country and my happiness was still in full swing that i heard of the blast in Wah, Pakistan. It was a suicide bomb attack in one of the ordinance factories factories there. It happened on August 21, 2008, some time in the afternoon. So many innocent lives taken (more than 100). So many family heads and bread winners blown away in a matter of seconds, leaving their families unprotected among the fierce human kind. Sources (close acquaintances who live in Wah) told that there were even cases where two or more members of the same family got killed in the blast. So many people injured and left helpless in the merciless world.

Who can do such injustice? Who can show such cruelty? It was a sheer act of terrorism. I hope the suicide bombers or the attack organizers are not seeking rewards from Allah. I wish and pray that they get heavily punished for inflicting such pain on so many innocents. May Allah keep us all safe from the clutches of such heinous offenders.

Thursday 21 August 2008

I Need a Coolant! Please!

The cooling in my office is completely busted. My brain is melting and my temperature (as in rage) is rising. I am turning into a monster. Not that I already am not, but I am turning into the worst kind. ;-) I fear of devouring innocent little creatures just because they made a teensy weensy mistake. I am afraid nobody will remain safe, unless they flee away from my sight. Or maybe I should close my own eyes or put on my shades.

I have tried drinking chilled water but that is not helping me much. I am continuing to bubble and boil. I badly need a coolant or else I will wreck havoc all around.

Tuesday 19 August 2008

I Support Zardari?

So if i am against Musharraf, does it mean i support Zardari? If i am being joyful at seeing Musharraf turned into an EX-President, does that mean i am dreaming to see Zardari in the role of the current one? If i want to see Musharraf held accountable for his actions, does it mean that i have grown an all forgiving attitude towards Zardari? If i would love to see Musharraf prosecuted, would i really wish to see Zardari pardoned?

The answer to all these questions is 'no'. No with a capital N and a capital O. NO! For heaven's sake, no!

Justice Will Prevail

I felt sad when i heard that a dictator was being bid farewell in the form of a 'guard of honour'. I felt a dash of anguish to see that the elected government did nothing to stop that act. I feel grief to see that there are signs of him getting away with everything he did. I feel dismayed at realizing that he might not have to face any accountability.

Musharraf must be prosecuted in the court of law for at least these two things if not more. First, for being responsible for hundreds and thousands of missing citizens of Pakistan, also known as 'missing persons'. Second, for the massacre of thousands of innocents (men, women and children) in Lal Masjid in July 2007.

I am also not sure about the justice system in our worldly courts. But i am sure that it will prevail in the court of Allah.

Musharraf Resigned

The happiest news of yesterday, August 18, 2008, was that Musharraf resigned. I still don't know what to make of the whole 'resignation' thing, but i know that i am extremely happy he is not the President of Pakistan anymore. Pakistan is free from the clutches of a dictator. Dictatorship is out and democracy has reigned, once again. It's a time to celebrate and rejoice.

Long live democracy! Long Live Pakistan!

Saturday 16 August 2008

Am a V.I.Bee

Oh and did i mention that i am currently a V.I.Bee on PuzzleBee. ;-)

V.I.Bee PuzzleBee Rank

Emptied the Bookmarks Bag - PuzzleBee

I had bundled up a zillion puzzles in my Bookmarks section in PuzzleBee. I kept finding good ones and kept bookmarking them. The aim was to finish doing them all. But every now and then i would stray away from that section and finish puzzles from elsewhere, like ones done by my pal, from the recent updates and from among the highly rated ones. To be very honest, i was getting bored with my own bookmarked puzzles.

One day i thought to just remove all puzzles from there, without completing them. But then i set out to do them one by one. Page after page i completed puzzles. Easy, medium and hard ones. (Then i bought the Puzzle In Any Difficulty tool and started doing all puzzles in medium difficulty to increase my skill.) And today, finally i managed to compelete the last ones as well.

My Bookmarks bag is now empty. I am resisting myself from filling it rather overloading it again. But i know i will never learn. Besides, many times you come across fun puzzles but time is scarce. So why not bookmark them for later. Here i go again!

Thursday 14 August 2008

August 14, Pakistan's Independence Day

Today is August 14, 2008. It will be the same day in the rest of the world but here in Pakistan this date has a significance. 61 years ago Pakistan got its independence on the very same day. We have come a long way since then. Many things achieved and many present in the waiting list. Hope we achieve those soon.

I am not actually celebrating by hoisting the flag on the roof, putting up decorations or lighting candles. If anyone saw me, they wouldn't even think i am celebrating at all. But at heart i am happy and relieved that we have this country. Maybe it is not one of the top countries of the world, and maybe it is not the finest place to live (as considered by many). But at least it is mine. A place i can call homeland. A place that gives me identity.

Since my country has so many problems, it only gives me a chance to correct them and clean up as much mess as i can. I am not making any resolutions, never did and never will. I just hope that i am able to at least put a fraction of my words in action. I know that would make a huge difference.

Happy Independence Day to all us Pakistani people, all around the world! :-)

Interesting Numbers

Today on August 14, 2008, i saw some interesting figures on my Site Meter blog counter. Take a look:

My Site Meter Statistics

The numbers that are exciting me are 3333; the number of total hits on my blog and 100; the number of visits to my blog in the previous week. Hope to keep seeing 'interesting' numbers on the counter in the coming days.

Sunday 10 August 2008

Sunday Office Sucks

Today was Sunday. I am sure most of the people were home enjoying while i was toiling at work. And even my boss hadn't asked me to come. It was my very own initiative. I guess they say correct when they say that with seniority comes more responsibility. You do not remain entitled to the occasional tantrums of not wanting to work or not wanting to go to office on a holiday. All this because you are more senior and you not only have to do your own work but get work done from others as well.

It is not all that bad. There are perks involved with seniority. My favorites is more salary. :-D And then you get to be given the title 'manager' that looks impressive from all angles. Your boss listens more to you and your ideas. Even asks for suggestions and approves as well.

Sometimes i think that i have had all these perks from the very beginning (except the more salary bit to which i reach rather gradually each year). The boss has always listened and many a times has agreed to my advice. I confess to enjoying the title of 'Manager' from a very early stage of my career.

But then again, whether responsibility is high or low, i never could get used to showing up in office on a holiday. And going to office on a Sunday is the torture of the highest order. Hope there aren't many such Sunday's in my life when i have to be in office. ;-)

Saturday 9 August 2008

I Have Nothing To Say

When you have absolutely nothing to say but are still adamant to say something then what do you think happens? I know! You end up saying something which in turn negates the notion that you had nothing to say in the first place. Makes sense? ;-)

Rich Text - Not a Good Idea

I just switched back to the plain text editor after gazing at the horrific display that my blog has put up. The post i just made using the rich text editor looks very bad. Font size is too big and bold. The image, however, has reached the post safe and sound. Though i still need to position it correctly. Or maybe i should let this blog remain as is for my own future reference. :-D

Well blogging from e-mail is a breeze but the results are not always according to one's wishes. Text in my last post i made via e-mail (plain text editor) looks all jumbled. The paragraphs are all crammed together and the font is also strange.

But hey, i am not being ungrateful as e-mail is my only option to blog from work. ;-) At least till they find this out as well and block Yahoo too.

PS: I have just used blogger to fix the look and feel of this post.

Yahoo Rich Text & Attached Images

As i can't blog via blogger right now (as i am in office and blogger is unfortunately blocked here), i am once again going to blog via e-mail. This time i am using the rich text editor of Yahoo mail instead of the plain text one. I want to see that will my fonts remain intact if i blog via this editor. I also want to see if i can send images within the post this way. I can see that i cannot insert the image between the lines of text, but i can attach a file. I am attaching a test image file to see what happens. Wish me luck! :-)




Friday 8 August 2008

Go Zigzag To Get The Best aka Stay Patient at all Costs

So what do you do when you are called into a meeting for the Nth time and the agenda is observation of office timings? You are rarely disobeying the law but are called in just to “discuss” why others are doing it because you are a manager. The meeting that is never ever fruitful. A gathering where we always state our problems but neither get any commitments from the management nor solutions.

Are you allowed to scream like hell and run out of there? Can you show discontent and force others to kick you out? Can you roar and scare everybody away? What can you do actually? In which wall can you go and bang your head.

I am tired of the meaningless solution-less talk by people around me. I am tired of not doing or not being able to do productive stuff to solve problems. Maybe I am just sick and tired of my current job. Maybe it has finally gotten to me. Should I quit or hang in there till I get my bonus?

Damn humans! Always thinking of money and benefits. Slaves of their rational thought. But I guess the humans also have a taste of doing the “heart’s desire” and getting hurt. So come to think of it, there is no choice. This way is a high climb up, that way a long fall down. Situations are never perfect. We have to zigzag our way through to get the best deal available.

You Take My Self Control

A couple of days ago when I pulled out the weighing machine from under the sofa and stepped on it, I got a big shock. I was horror stricken to see that I had not only gained the “only” Kg that I had lost in the previous few weeks but had also gained a bit more than that. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have an action plan to roll back the “gain”. *sigh*

When I reached my office that day, I realised that I have been having a lot of tea/coffee there lately. It hit me that each cup (read big mug) contains sugar, even if it is half a teaspoon. And every little contributes towards something huge. So I made a resolution not to have tea/coffee any more.

I wrote this down on a “disabled” post-it that lacked the sticky substance and required crutches of scotch tape to be posted somewhere. I couldn’t get the required prescribed treatment (scotch tape) for the only lonely post-it. So instead of getting posted on my monitor, it got stuck in my file folder. I kept looking at its red text on the yellow background from time to time. It even made me think twice (maybe thrice) each time I ordered tea. I managed to cut down a few mugs but couldn’t stop completely. With this entire struggle the day finally ended and I was knocked out.

The next morning, I was slightly sleep deprived (due to unscheduled load-shedding on the previous night). I went to the office, looked at my post-it banner, and resisted ordering coffee. But then I was asked if I wanted some. The first thing I did was to take out the post-it and tear it into tiny pieces. Threw the remains in the bin and then nodded yes to confirm my order. *evil laugh*

That was an exhibition of how little self control I can demonstrate. On being offered tea or coffee i can easily hum Laura Branigan's song 'Self Control' (You take my self, you take my self control). ;-) hehe

Oh well! Live is short and one CANNOT live without caffeine. Trust me. ;-)


Tuesday 5 August 2008

4th Anniversary: mykahani.blogspot.com

I know I forgot to celebrate on the exact day but then better late than never. Let's start with some history. July 15, 2004 was the day this blog was born. That was the day I stepped into the realm of blogging and made my very first post. Since then the frequency of postings has been deviating but there has never been a moment when I thought of quitting. My blog showcases the good times I have had as well as some bad kinks of my life. It has always been a pal and has always empowered me with the power of expression and free speech. Many people would not even understand the joys my blog has brought to me (and I am in no mood to explain).

Here I also need to mention all the readers who have been reading the blog regularly and/or off and on. Without their reading contribution it would have been harder getting here so easily. The blog does empower the writer but it is the reader who empowers a blog.

This year on July 15, 2008, my blog had its 4th anniversary. I hope that my blog and I can grow together over the next numerous moments in time, till the day I depart from this world. I know I would leave sooner as it is impossible for me to image the death of all blogger servers. ;-)

May we have a wonderful time ahead as we have had so far on the journey upon which we have embarked hand in hand. May we find many a friends on our way to cherish. :-)


Spelling Bloopers and Me

One of the tasks that I am supposed to do at work while reviewing documents is to correct any spelling mistakes found. My boss is very particular about this issue and so am I. He says that complicated and complex mistakes can be easily explained to the clients. But spelling mistakes merely portray a picture of sloppy work. I cannot agree more to his comments as I believe it to be true too.

I am now so used to spotting spelling mistakes that I can sense them from miles away. Off course the work processor is my best friend in this regard. But I have also been taught well at school as far as spellings are concerned. I have also become pretty confident too that spelling errors in a document scanned by my eagle eyes would not go unnoticed and corrected.

Lately the confidence has been shaken a bit. I had been going through some older posts on my own blog and spotted a handful of such bloopers. I found ‘film’ to be written as ‘filem’. I found ‘there’ to be written as ‘theer’. And I even found the title of one of my post saying ‘motivativating’ instead of ‘motivating’. This one I found by chance as some poor gal or guy had searched for this and had been redirected to my blog. That person would surely have made a mistake in spelling the word out. But it led to me finding my blunder and correcting it.

Now I am planning to go through a number of my previous posts every day and correct any and all spelling slip ups that I may find. I hope my eagle eyes can work as well on my personal stuff as they work for my official work. If I fail I would soon be putting up an advertisement for the post of a proof reader. Be on the look out! ;-)

Monday 4 August 2008

Happiness via Ctrl+F5

Do I really think that continuously pressing Ctrl+F5 on my site counter statistics page would actually increment my blog hit counter reading? Not really! But it is fun doing it. And when after such a Ctrl+F5, the counter reading does increase, due to an actual hit, I do feel joy. ;-) hehe It doesn't matter at that time if i had had to Ctrl+F5 a thoudand times just to see my counter increment by 1. It's just plain simple joy. Tears of happiness slowly flood my eyes. (OK well this is a bit too much exaggeration! But i know you won't mind, now would you?)

Such little things make a silly girl like me happy. I must really be silly. :-)

Oh here i go again!

Catch Me if You Can!

It was already painful to see Facebook and Orkut blocked yet again in my office. And then I found out that Blogger was blocked too. Tears rushed to my eyes and a fierce storm built up. But I calmed it and stayed composed. Didn't let a soul know about the pain induced on me due to this blockage. It was tough keeping my cool but I managed to do that.

And then, it dawned upon me that accessing blogger.com was not the only way to blog. *evil laugh* I could blog via e-mail too. This is exactly what I am doing right now. Catch me of you can, my dear OM and NA. *giggles*

Sunday 3 August 2008

Fruitful Day

Today seems like a fruitful day. I managed to do my laundry amidst the load-shedding. Had a 'girls day out' and saw the movie i had been waiting for, for the past so many months. Incremented my PuzzleBee rank. Did a couple of other chores. I, however, could not touch the bundle i had brought from office. That i will take care of in the morning. Did have another setback when i tried to blog in Urdu but failed. But that is also a minor wrinkle that i can easily iron out. So i guess the day was pretty much fruitful. :-D

Dolki & Gol Gappay

While regularly checking out my blog counter statistics, I have come to know that many of the people who hit my blog are looking for the recipe of 'gol gappay' or they are eager to learn 'how to play dholki'. Well sometimes I feel embarrassed that getting thrown on the sands of my personal blog wasts their time. I might feel the same way if i was looking for something specific and irrelevant stuff came up in the search (disguised perfectly as highly relevant stuff). To mend this I have decided to look for the gol gappa recipe as well as tutorials on playing dholki. When I find something good, I will put up links to that 'real' stuff here on this blog. This way people would get a least bit of usefullness out of their visit here.

Important: This blog was never meant to be useful to anyone in any way. I am just feeling bad for the lost souls so that is why embarking upon this quest of finding relevant stuff for them. ;-)

Friday 1 August 2008

Flooded News Feed

The activity on my Facebook News Feed suddenly increased by leaps and bounds a couple of days ago. I did not know what was going on. And then i realized that my youngest cousin (17 years younger) had joined in. And just as new kids are with their enthusiasm and curiosity, she seemed to have installed practically all the quizzes and gift sending applications available on Facebook. When i go to her profile, it is difficult to find my way through those quizzes & applications to the wall to write a few words. But i successfully stumble all the way to the wall and back. It's not bad to have your news feed flooded. Just observing till when will all this gushing enthusiasm last. ;-)

'Text' Badminton

Today i was too busy with work, training sessions and meetings. Didn't have much time to play. There was no loadshedding today either. So practically no chance to have a real game of badminton (getting muscles pulled couldn't diminish my game playing spirits). As i couldn't play the real way, i played it with texts. Sent so many texts to my mates and got so many back that it did seem like badminton (or Tennis, as i call this vigorous exchange between two ends at times). The frequency of sending and recieving texts was also like a series of continuous shots from the rackets that prevent a shuttlecock from falling to the ground.

I didn't even quit during dinner. ;-) My father should his displeasure but that didn't stop me either. What i did to provide peace and quite at the table was to make my phone silent. ;-) hehe As they say, where there is a will there a way. I enjoyed the 'text' badminton but it cost me a fortune. Well did cost me a few Pak rupee tenners but i guess what i did was worth it. At the end of it all, success embraced me as i had finalised a 'seemingly impossible' get together with my pals. ;-)