Miththu lost and found

We lost miththu a month or so back. He was sitting on top of his cage (we dont lock him in), and we were upstairs. The door was open. When we came down, miththu was nowhere to be found. Several weeks later, we were returning home and in the street we saw miththu perched on top of a kid's shoulder. He said that he brought it from his village 7 months earlier. But we tested miththu out and sure enough miththu exhibited all individualistic characteristics. My brother took miththu back.

Laylatal Qadr on MSN

This is interesting.

It's that time again

It's midterm time again. Got one three hours from now. Been here studying since 6 am at the university. Same yesterday.

Student at LUMS

Just ran into a student of mine in the PDC (Pepsi Dining Center) at LUMS. He has joined the MBA program here. It was good to see him after a long time. He worked at a software development company in Karachi for two years after his graduation from NED University before joining LUMS. He was appreciating the very tough studies here and mentioning the nighters that he is doing. I agreed with him and said that while we did nighters at the end of the year at NED, here we do it throughout the year. It'll be good to have a familiar face from the past at LUMS.

Change of fate

Well, he said he'd change the city's fate. You gotta give credit to the man, he's done it in admirable time. He said he'd change it into Paris. Well, maybe he didnt exactly make it Paris, but Venice isnt too far from Paris, is it. You have to give him credit for that. I guess we should rename to something like I. I. Chundrigar Canal, or M. A. Jinnah River.

Investment

The other day, I was watching a program on TV which was addressing the concerns of overseas Pakistanis wanting to invest in real estate back home. Give me a break! As if the pseudo-investment from within wasnt enough to blow things out of proportion. Property prices have increased to at least 4 times what they were about five years ago. House rents have sky rocketed. Anyone renting a house is obviously a salaried class person. In my opinion seven or eight years ago, any salaried person renting a house could never hope to own a house. Now, it's even worse. I am seriously wondering if we'll be able to rent a house one or two years later.
What the hell is this? I dont buy any such thing as investment in real estate. It's the most selfish thing I ever heard, which is benefiting one person and hurting millions of others. If it were investment in real estate in the form of hotels and stuff in the tourist districts, I'd understand, because that would give tourists better facilities and create employment. But no, I dont see people going that way. All they want to do is to buy a piece of land in a housing society somewhere, keep it till its price is three times its buying price (which, imho is at least six times what it reasonably should be), or erect a house and rent it out.
No one cares! And how about the masoor key daal selling at Rs. 70 per kg. To my overseas friends who think the present regime is good: Yea, sure. If they'd only leave us able to live. We might not be able to sustain livelihood for more than two years if these trends continue. OK, so the price trends are the same everywhere in the world, there's a slum, but we're getting subsidies, and aid, and still not getting it. Our oil prices are decided based on international market prices even though we are sold oil at much lower rates. But who cares, right! Not until you find the chokehold too tight for you to breath. Await that moment, my countrymen. I can only pray that at that moment, we depart as less painfully as possible.

In dependence day

So the "in dependence" day is drawing close. I just cant get myself to be happy on this day. It pains me greatly to see the very plight of us. 59 years we've been banging our heads on the walls. At least we should've developed some civic sense, of which we have none. We have no sense of responsibility towards the country that we live in. Nothing but selfishness abounds. I wish someone would come up with a way to set things right quickly because there's very little time left.

Whoever is guilty....

So, our Federal Minister for privatization said to the press guys that following the detailed judgement of the supreme court, the Pakistan Steel Mills will be re-offered for privatization. He also said that whoever is found guilty in the misdeeds of doing a bad deal in the previously held privatization process of the same indsutry will be punished.
It's funny that the same people who were happily claiming the privatization as their success will have to look for people responsible for a discovered failure in the same.

I just want you to know who I am

And I'd give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
Cause sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything seems like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know your alive

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

Business proposition

Forgot to upload a site image to explain what I am talking about, when I published this post originally. Here is a pictorial view.

Well, I've got an excellent business idea. I cant put it in action since I am not in Karachi. But it's yours for free, if you are up for it.
Thinking of the submerged underpass turned swimming pool is right there in Clifton, and the dockyard is nearby, one might as well run a submarine service to get people and their vehicles across the underpass.
Dont like that? Here's another one. Suck out a little bit more of water (if the surrounding area could use some more, so that there is some head clearance in the underpass to operate a ferry. Operate a cruise across the damned thing. From that, you can go crazy about the opportunities and value added services. Here's another free idea, throw in a few fish as well, makes for a great cruise. There's money to be made here.

Dont blame them

"It wasnt our fault. It wasnt the drainage problem. It wasnt rain water. It was a sewage line nearby that burst." The sewage line is someone else's problem. They probably beat the shit out of the person asking the question. Go figure!

Iron

I was watching Spider Man 2 (again) this morning, and as Mary Jane Watson ran away to Peter Parker's apartment and vowed to be his, and Peter's friend Harry was being prepared to become a vilain, it was fun noting how we'd see M J in Spider Man 3, ironing the spider man costume for her beloved husband cursing who the hell came up with the idea of the heavily ribbed suit.
On a more serious note, it was worth grasping that we shouldnt be disappointed by how people hate us even though we're doing the right thing. There are people who think highly of us, it's just that we dont see that when others say bad things about us or treat us badly. When you fall trying to stop a train headed for disaster, you will find people who will lift you on their shoulder and stand by you.

Sense

Surprisingly, some sense has gone into the brains of the powers that be controlling the Internet connectivity tap to Pakistan, and the blogspot.com domain is viewable again in Pakistan. Better late than never, I guess.

Monkey business

In Ayubia recently, I found these monkeys going about their business. You can see Pakistan in the background, clearly identifiable courtesy the garbage in a public place.

VPC

Read about my recent first encounters with Virtual PC 2004.

Presentation upload

I have a technical blog at http://idevelop.spaces.msn.com/PersonalSpace.aspx. Please do visit it. I also have an MSN group called IDevelop and have uploaded the presentation in the files section of that group. The message is posted on my technical blog. I am sorry about the delay, I was caught up with a research project. I was hoping to upload it to my webserver so I can offer you a simple URL to download instead of the "join my MSN group" marketing crap, but there are some complications with the upload and I'll get it fixed asap. Thanks for the appreciation and keep in touch.

Long time no (PD)C

OK. So, I've got several complaints that I've not been blogging, which is pretty well placed, too. I was pretty busy with life in general and a research project in particular. I came down to PDC 2006 with minimal preparation for my session, which I feel didnt go too well. It's not that my demo didnt work or anything, but I wasnt satisfied with how I did in presenting the material. Maybe a bit rusty, but I'm sure I can work on that and fix it. Unfortunately, this had to be at the mega event such as PDC.
The community lounge was pretty bad this year. The volunteers were not interested in anything but each other. There were issues everywhere. "I told him not to do that, and still he was doing it" type of material. Pretty immature stuff. The event overall, didnt come out to me as good as last year's. Let's hope for the best next time around.

Long time no post

Life's been busy. Got married. Toughest quarter yet. Projects still outstanding. Will write more frequently later. Fareeha, I couldnt reply to you directly. Will try later.

Beauty and the geek

Beauty and the geek

The Americans have landed

The Americans have landed in Karachi! No, its not the FBI or the Marine Corpes. It's my sister, her husband and my nephew. They are here after about five years. Long time no see. They came down as a surprise. They werent supposed to come in another week or so, but they did and called home from the Karachi airport.