Late for office……..

This morning, i woke up at 8 went through the usual routines, got ready by 8:45 and was about to leave when i remembered i had to take my brother with me. Tried waking him up, but he wouldnt… so waited…. n waited..

n guess what!! he woke up 20 minutes later saying, “bhai, you go, i’ll take the bus!” (aarggghh!!)

so i grab the keys, go down to my car, put the keys in the ignition, turned it, and….

nothing! :S

WTF?!? did some initial diagnostics, and learned that the battery had died over the night! which was pretty weird since, nothing was left open!!

two days ago, the car battery had died as well, the lights were left on by my brother. It started a while later though, but the battery water had depleted quite a bit. I did ask him to refill it, but being my brother he didnt and i also forgot about it.

Now im in a fix.. its 11:30, im still at home, and the car wont start…

the day after tomorrow

A wonderful movie depicting one of the *possible* scenarios of global warming.. the coming of the next ice age. Only, they sped up the whole process to less than a week, rather than the 5 to 6 hundred years it takes.

A very old move too.. so why am i writing about it now? There are three reasons for this post (see! there’s a reason to my madness afterall).

Reason 1: It was playing on Star Movies right now, and i had it switched on.

Reason 2: There’s a scene in it where its raining really heavily in new york and the whole streets are clogged with water, cars are drowned and people are walking towards safety. The first time i watched it, i was horrified at how those people would be feeling, and what would i have done if i was in their place. This time, i knew. The events of the week before last (the rain week as i call it) flashed before my eyes, watching cars almost fully drowned, people being electrocuted, and myself wading through knee deep water just to get my car started. This time, it reminded me, that no matter what, the will of the people is what makes them survive even the greatest odds. And it is the collective will of the people, which makes order, even out of the worst chaos! Watching all the chaos in the movie, i kind of felt proud of my fellow city dwellers at how they had faced the real life drama and survived!

Reason 3: There’s a character in this movie, the girlfriend of Jack’s son, who was an over-acheiver all her life, planning everything around her to get into the top college, and get a top degree. They’re sitting in the library, after the wave has hit the city, and she says, “All that planning for nothing”. This line, rather the concept behind this line, hit me like a rock on my face the first time i watched it. And subsequently, i watched all my “planned life” go down the drain due to uncontrollable circumstances. I realized at that point, that life means making the most of out it while trying to fulfill your responsibilities to everyone around you, taking risks and feeling alive rather than just planning and following your plan. True, everyone suggests that, but in the end, we hardly follow what we plan.

Its 1 AM in the morning, im sleepy, and this post just had to be done.. dont know if im making sense or not, but i wanted to get it out.

blogwordoftheweek: end

Change marks both the beginning and the end!

This weeks blogword fits in perfectly with the theme i’ve been carrying out on my blog, regarding the changes in my life.

What will this change end in the current state of affairs i call life?

1. living with family
2. living on the clifton side of the bridge
3. living in the same community for over 16 years
4. sharing a bathroom with my brother (and getting in countless fights over fogetting to unlock his door)
5. coming late to office (a direct consequence of point number 4)
6. managing household finances
7. monthly groceries routine
8. bi-weekly fruit shopping (i now how to pick ripe fruit!!!)
9. going home on time (still a question mark)
10. sneaking into the house when your late
11. homecooked meals (though still available from relatives places)
12. and many more….

On the other hand, this also marks the beginning of a new era, such as

1. living on my own
2. sharing a room with an unknown person (always wanted to know what that felt like)
3. going out whenever i want (day OR night)
4. eating out more
5. getting a much more active social life
6. cant think of more… :S

Cool! This is the first time i’ve listed these things down! Damn it! its gonna be FUN!

Template Change

I hereby title the second half of year 2006 as the “Half-Year of Change”.

Since everything is taking an new turn in my life, i decided to go and do some more changes! This time, to my blog template, leveraging the new features in Blogger Beta. (thanks to uXuf)

It doesnt offer anything new, since i’ve just ported the widgets i used before to the new template. And i’ve been wanting to use this ‘cleaner’ template for quite sometime now. However, one thing which has changed “under the hood” is how feeds are retrieved on the sidebar. I used to use a script called feed2js, but now i use the feature provided within blogger.

One thing which still doesnt work, and i dont know how to fix it…. The google adsense links on the sidebar.. somehow, they’re not being retrieved.. which leads me to believe that maybe the stat collecting links might not work either.. oh well, such is the price of change.

One note to other bloggers willing to check out the new features in Beta, when you add content, it will most of the times give you an error, or get stuck displaying the ‘Saving…’ label. Just ignore it, since it does the work in the background just fine.

Too much stuff

Even though we dont realize it, over the years we manage to gather a whole lot of stuff which form what we call ‘homeliness’. You only realize that when

1. Your spring cleaning or clearing out the attic/garage
2. Your moving

Which is how i came across this fact that, WE (read mom), have entirely TOO MUCH STUFF!!

I spent nite before last with my brother packing up the drawing room, it took us the better part fo 5 hours and 8 cartons before we managed to come out saying “we did it”. (actually, we didnt to it completely, still have 3 cabinets/2 cartons to go through, but we ran out of cartons so that was it).

This is the first time i counted up how many plates/glasses/cups/bowls/spoons and what not we have. Suffice to say, if i ever have to throw a party of 50 people.. i wont be needing to borrow crockery/cutlery.

And thats just the drawing/dining rooms!! the whole rest of the house is to follow suit!

Good thing dad arranged for a five to ten professional packers/movers to help out with the stuff, or it would’ve been HELL! God bless you Dad!

Change – A constant

Only recently, i ranted about a change in my workplace… and what was my initial reaction to it. Mashallah, im all settled in my new place now, which i think is a bit better, since now i get to interact with the people more. I used to be at the end of the office and mostly lost in my own little world. So that was good.

Just as i was settling into that change, another one happened! And this was TOO sudden.

My mom informed me three days ago, that she’s decided to join my dad in Islamabad! She was just there for a week, to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary (mashallah) and this bombshell dropped when she came back.

Now, i knew we had to move eventually, the house we’re currently living in is marked to be demolished and we were served the eviction notice quite sometime back. But i was under the impression the move was going to be localized in Karachi. Now its suddenly intercity. My brother will be going with mom to islamabad as well, while i’ll be staying back.

Why dont i join them? Two reasons… actually, just one reason. I have to finish off my university work (which is at its last stage) before i can actually leave the city. Oh yea.. and work.

Whats going to become of me then? Well, step number 1 is.. find a place to stay. I have the option of staying with relatives, and i *so dont* wanna exercise that option. Whats the fun of being alone in the city, if you still have to play by the rules… that too, someone else’s? My parents offered a certain level of freedom to me, and we had a ‘no interrogation’ policy at home about each others well being, if we were home at night at a decent time.

Im looking for a room to myself, probably in one of the navy messes, which will allow me some degree of freedom and a taste of what life on my own is like.

And so I predict, this blog is going to take a new turn as well (yet more change), along with my life.

Google Error

I switched to blogger beta… which, surprisingly, was not all that better. Now usually, betas offer something excting, (though uXuf disagrees), and that too… beta’s by google. Through blogger though, they’ve missed the mark by MILES!

Not only is the new features unappealing to us power users, our current templates, on which countless number of hours have been devoted, mixing and matching stuff from everywhere, are not supported on the new system (yet).

How is that supposed to make our life better? Has google finally started turning into a big corporate master of evil? (like the current corporate master of evil, microsoft).

Why did i start this rant? Well, because basically i cant view my blog right now, thanks to a Google Error Page showing up! The one thing i hated about orkut may now become a reality for blogs as well. For some reason, the coding at google, supposedly robust coding, always makes ways to fail when being used by us mere mortals… resulting in…

Google
	Error

Server Error

The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.

Please try again in 30 seconds.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!! I wanna view my blog!!!!!!! :@

Power Trip

Dont you just hate it when people in your workplace go on their petty power trips every so often?

There’s this guy in my office, he’s in an administrative role, and the daily attendence comes under him. This is the first month that we have the daily attendance being done in our office, which ofcourse means that this is the first month im not gonna get my full pay. If we miss more than 8 hours a month of work, we get fined one days pay. This month.. i’ve missed around 16 hours.

Coming back to power trips, this guy started stating
“If you dont fill the attendance every day, im going to mark you abset”

“If you dont fill out-time every day, im going to report you and deduct your pay”

and what not!! I just hate it when people get all power-y over such stuff!

hypocrisy

The latest fad in the world… everyone goes on and on about how ‘bad’ they’ve got it.

Hindu’s shout out…
Christians shout out…
Muslims shout out…

but above all… Jews shout out the loudest. And that too about how their ancestors were killed by the so-called Halocaust, over 50 years ago, while at the same time, performing their own little genocide in palestine and now lebanon!

This rant is based on the news of the Jew community, and Israel shouting out against a restaurant which chose ‘Hitlers Cross’ as its name.

Here’s the hypocrisy…..

“The incident exposes the lack of understanding of the present generation about the atrocities of the past and the need to educate them about crimes against humanity,” federation chairman Jonathan Solomon said.

Am i to assume, taking over Arab land forcefully is *not* a crime against humanity? Expelling people from their own homes is *not* a crime against humanity? Bombing the hell out of them is *not* a crime against humanity? Killing innocent civilians just because they happen to be of the same race as their ‘enemy’ is *not* a crime against humanity?

If the above is true, then the Halocaust was also *not* a crime against humanity! If it isnt.. Israel needs to be tried for crimes against humanity itself!

Interpretations…

Its so funny sometimes what they write in classifieds these days… whether just to shortage their space, or to get too much through.. many people often end up making serious errors in judgement.

This email i got portrays the same thing…. and i seriously laughed my ass of reading it!

These four classified ads appeared in a Kuwaiti newspaper on four Consecutive days. The last three hopelessly trying to correct the first day’s mistake.

MONDAY:
For sale – SK Shah has a sewing machine for sale. Phone 2555-0707 after 7PM and ask for Mrs Mani who lives with him cheap.

TUESDAY:
Notice: We regret having erred in SK Shah’s ad yesterday. It should have read, “One sewing machine for sale cheap. Phone 2555-0707 and ask for Mrs Mani, who lives with him after 7PM.”

WEDNESDAY:
Notice: SK Shah has informed us that he has received several annoying telephone calls because of the error we made in the Classified ad yesterday. The ad stands correct as follows: “For sale – SK Shah has a sewing machine for sale. Cheap. Phone 2555-0707 after 7PM and ask for Mrs Mani who loves with him.”

THURSDAY:
Notice: I, SK Shah, have no sewing machine for sale. I smashed it. Don’t call 2555-0707 as I have had the phone disconnected. I have not been carrying on with Mrs Mani. Until yesterday, she was my housekeeper but she quit.