Good bye… cruel world!

Note: the following is not a suicidal post!!!

Cruel world, for me, became blogger and my urge to try out anything ‘beta’! *sigh* i tried living with it, adjusting to its ever stupid demands, going through proxy and proxy just to have a glimps of it, yet somehow.. it was not meant to be. So now i’ve decided, this is going to be my last post here!! and thats final!

But no, im not gonna stop blogging! Ofcourse not! im too addicted to quit! What sort of message would that send to the poor kids!?

Yesterday, while going through the decision i’ve been mullin through for months now, i saw light at the end of the tunnel! The decision being, if to go away from blogger, then where!? (choice of host and platform are very important and after months of blogging, i have a pretty good idea of what i needed).

The answer?

www.wordofmansoor.com

Yes folks! its up!!! From now, i post only there. I request you all to please upgrade your bookmarks! See you there! Regular commenters (u know who u are) leave atleast one comment so that i know u’ve arrived.. will be awaiting ur arrival.

blogword: red

I’ve said it again and again.. and yet, i’ll say it one more time.

I hate doing my finances…. because no matter how much or how hard i try, i always end up in red.

One year on..

This i wanted to post yesterday, but since i was offline the whole day, today is going to be it.

Sunday, October 8th, we witnessed the first ‘anniversary’ of the devastation caused by the Earthquake in the northern regions of Pakistan.

For me, the quake kind of had a much more personal touch… my father was posted in Islamabad when it happened, and the way he described it to me, forever changed my priorities in life.

He was sleeping at the time. When the first of the tremors hit, his eyes opened and for a few seconds he could not understand what was happening. Everything around him shaking, the sound of rumbling was defeaning. Then it hit him, he was in the middle of a quake! Being the logical man that he his, he figured out it would be no use to even try to get up and get to safety, the quake would be over much much before that, so he did the next best thing, he prayed.

In his words, "I thought to myself, this is it, this is my time. I thought of my family, said a small prayer of forgiveness, and started reciting the kalma"

I still get nightmares on what could’ve been…

May God bless all those people who lost family members in the quake, and give them the courage to move on.

Blogthought: Because i didnt

Because i didnt want to make a new blog or leave this space, i put up haloscan and reverted my blog to its previous template.

p.s. blogger beta sucks

come full circle

When blogger initially launched, they lacked a lot of features which
would become a mainstay of the blogging world later on. These included
trackbacks, and more importantly, comments!

Comments, which make each and every post worth writing.
Comments, which allow interaction on ur blog
Comments, which make you want to open up your mailbox every morning.

After a lot of lobbying by bloggers around the world, the people at
blogger added comments and Blogger finally became worth setting up a
blog on.

Then… the Pakistani government blocked blogger blogs in Pakistan,
thanks to the cartoon controversy. Their mechanism was very simple,
block the IP on which blogspot was hosted, and voilla, all blogs were
inaccessible at one go. Posting on the blogs was okay, since for
posting another domain www.blogger.com was used, which had a different
IP, only reading was a problem. But we were not to be dettered… some
talented people came up with pkblogs.com and we all breathed a sigh of
relief. The blog ban was kind of lifted… atleast with people wise
enough to know pkblogs.com.

But… and theres always a but… things were not going to be that
simple. Blogger decided to upgrade their services, and as with
everything google, they came out with blogger beta! Introducing a lot
of new features which were desperately required by the community in
general… but also introducing a very big problem for us bloggers in
Pakistan who had 'upgraded'! They setup the new domain
beta.blogger.com on the SAME IP as www.blogspot.com was hosted on.

What does that mean for us? Nothing much, except that we now cannot
post blogs (the people who upgraded) nor can people in pakistan post
comments on our blogs. What pleasure it is to upgrade! no?!

I <a href="http://wordofmansoor.blogspot.com/2006/10/coming-soon.html"recently</a>
dabbled on making another blog on blogger using the previous setup, or
maybe move to another platform altogether.. but that was not to be. I
couldnt part with what i've put up here since so long… i wanted to
keep it! Now the only problem was.. how to enable commenting???!!

THAT was resolved a few minutes before posting this entry!! Welcome
haloscan! A service launched quite sometime ago to address no comment
feature on blogger, today came back into use thanks to the major f-ups
bloggers been going through! It allows users to post comments for each
post, which are saved on the haloscan servers, and accessible to
everyone visiting the blog through a popup window. The world comes
full circle yet again!

Comments are back up! and im not going anywhere yet! Long live the
pakistani spirit!!

Oh, and im emailing this post in! Hoping it works

coming soon..

I have to get myself rid of blogger beta. Which can only mean two things….

move to some other platform OR
move back to blogger basic

apprently, number 1 is out of the question… so now i need to move back. But what to name it? Also, im thinking of doing some kharcha and get a domain of my own.

What should i name it?

www.wordofmansoor.com? Sounds cool na!

status quo

Recently, over at my cousins, we had sort of a jamming session, getting everything off our collective chests and trying to feel a bit better about the mess that has become life. During this session, i realized something….

i was not connected anywhere..

Almost in all scenario’s the discussion involved “… and i asked S for advice…” “…M told me not too, but i didnt lissen…” “…U had been my support throughout …”

No where was i mentioned.. infact, most of the stuff i had heard for the first time ever. And these were the latest controversies in my own family.

That night led me to thinking… about how much a member of my extended family i really am? Before, i’ve always kind of prided myself in not being involved in the petty discussions going on everywhere and being kind of aloof… but these things were not petty. They were pretty life changing decisions being taken by people i hold really close to my heart.

In the last couple of days, i’ve thought a lot… and i have’nt come up with a solution! i’m so bad at socializing, that my nephew and niece promptly forget me in between meetings, and everytime i have to remind them that i’m their mamo! They know my other two cousins by name!

On the other hand however, being aloof has allowed me to live a relatively peaceful life. Since im not involved in the pettiness, im not involved in the fights, i have no bad will with any of my relatives, the little while i do meet them, i have a pretty good time…

Of the choices i have right now, im leaning towards maintaining the status-quo.

Setting the mood…

There are some things in life which immediately set your mood, especially if they happen in the morning. It could be your favourite song on the radio, seeing a specific color, a TV ad, seeing your best friends’ face passing by in the traffic on her way to work, anything… but after that, you can rest assured that the rest of the day would be nothing short of beautiful and exhilarating.

This is what happened this morning to me, as i made my way down from my new diggs down to work. The radio was set on CityFM 89, with Mr. Suhail Hashmi blaring out his musical selection, and just when i was about to change the station, it started…..

The song with which i’ve always had great memories.. the song which can lift me out almost instantaneously out of any doldrum life throws at me….

Udit Narayan and Sandhana Sargam’s Pehla Nasha

Two of my most favourite passages from the song..

Chaahe tum kuchh na kaho maine sun liyaKi saathi pyaar ka mujhe chun liyaChun liyaMaine Sun liya

and

Usne baat ki kuchh aise dhang seSapne de gaya vo hazaaron range keUsne baat ki kuchh aise dhang seSapne de gaya vo hazaaron range keReh jaoon jaise main haar keAur choome vo mujhe pyaar se

And whats even better than this song?? the remix version of it!

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!

Announcing… Pak Telecom Updates

I started up a series here called “Pak Telecom Updates” in which i was writing up what the mobile companies in Pakistan were upto. Posting on their latest offerings, ad campaigns, and my opinions on their various services.

Now, I’ve decided to seperate that series, or rather promote that series, into a blog of its own. So.. without further ado… i present to you

PakTelecomUpdates.blogspot.com

Your source for the latest in Pakistan’s telecom world.