A Journey through Dphil......

Chilled

2012-01-06T02:22:00.001Z

I was walking back from lab and did absolutely no work. Rather than going to my room, I decided to walk further down and just sit outside for a while. A picture I just took, it's extremely cold and my hands are freezing!!!

114 minutes!

2011-12-27T21:59:00.002Z

Our doubts, suspicions, are they a reflection of who we are ?

25th December 2011 (jumble of phrases )

2011-12-25T02:50:00.001Z

Walking back home at 2:40 am on a Christmas eve, this place is deserted and it feels like I am the only soul living here. Imran Khan is having a supposedly grand gathering in Karachi , am looking forward to what his plan is going to be for a better Pakistan , I read a bit of Oppenheim's book on signal processing in lab just now, rather skimmed through, had something of a not so nice conversation about going/ not going home early and oh we'll, life moves on.. The air feels supremely fresh , and the surroundings look very clean, a little chilly .. A couple of pictures I just took ate in order.. One is me holding snickers which I got from the vending machine and the other is of my department which I took as soon as I came out..

How I lost 4 KG in one month!

2011-12-02T18:21:00.002Z

The graphs explains it all..Most of the concepts here were learnt from this book by Dr. Dean Ornish, titled "The Spectrum". This is a really useful book and has taught me about simple things that we all should know and has been far more effective than "dieting" as we know it. I did indulge in things, some of which is visible from the previous posts here, but overall kept a balance. And it really seems to be working. I feel like I lost weight without imposing anything drastic on myself. And really, the change has to be a lifestyle one and not a temporary one to have any lasting impact.

Food indulgence !!!

2011-11-25T23:01:00.001Z

I have had 2 days of unhealthy food and now I need to arrest this trend before it starts showing up. I have generally had healthy food choices of late with fewer chicken , no raw sugar, much less chocolate , less refined carbohydrates and more wholemeal stuff and no fried stuff. The effects were showing up and I will talk about it in a future post.
For now, well ... one of our colleagues had come for her MPhil viva and it was decided to have dinner outside. We went to this restaurant which have buffet and I properly indulged by my recent standard and ate quite a bit. Here are pictures of my plate :p

Joy of research...

2011-11-25T04:52:00.001Z

I am walking back home and it's almost 5 am here. I could have left earlier but I was experimenting something and I found this trend which seemed very interesting and promising. And I really wanted to include that in my report which I need to submit within the next 13 hours. Sadly, after investigating further and compromising on my sleep, I found out that the supposed trend is not observed in a different condition and time doesn't permit me to look deeper but to discard my efforts and call it a day. Research might well be rewarding but more often than not, you will end up disappointed .. :)
The picture of my department that I just took right now, it's raining and the air feels so fresh and and and ..:D the road is totally empty and so quiet, I feel like I am the only soul in this city :D

Surprise parcel

2011-11-24T21:23:00.001Z

Today while sitting in the lab, the admin assistant came to me holding a big box and she said, "you have got flowers sent to you" with enough volume that everybody in the lab heard lol. Normally there is a pigeon hole where mails are kept but this one was too big to fit in and was therefore brought to me in person. Oh well, many people were sitting in the lab , more than the usual and this happened :p. There is also a little box with little pieces of chocolates. The interesting bit is that the parcel is that the sender's name is not present , sounds suspicious :p? Maybe, maybe not... :)
Notice the chocolates, they have pretty designs on them, cool (y)

poisonous seeds...

2011-11-20T18:04:00.003Z

Living a life is good as long as there is quality otherwise it's just sad :P. And what determines quality is neither the future nor the past. It's the present really. Who knows about future, who can guarantee if one will even live long enough, one really shouldn't poison their present for the sake of future.

I am currently watching a cricket match and I am hoping that I will start working on my thesis once I am done with this.Currently, Sri Lanka require another 34 runs with 4 wickets and 42 balls remaining..

Oh wait, Afridi got one more wicket!!!!

Stress balls

2011-11-16T21:18:00.001Z

I collected quite a few of these from various stalls of companies who promote themselves. These are called stress balls because they let you hold them in your hands and squeeze them etc. thereby giving you an outlet to expend your energy and helping release the rush of energy during stress. I love the concept, is your question answered :p?

A stress brain and a stress heart :)

2011-11-14T19:56:00.001Z

Stuff you spot when you roam around in the lab :D. So these stress toys are made by various companies who wish to advertise themselves. These look so cool, perhaps a bit geeky to have on table :p

A walk to my lab during daytime

2011-11-14T15:54:00.001Z

It is a pretty cold day today and it's close to maghrib right now but the picture should still be much more clear than the one in a previous post of mine. This should make it clear that it wasn't rubbish on the road the other day but these dry leaves which are everywhere to be seen these days.

Salmon with rice and salad

2011-11-14T15:29:00.001Z

I came home for a bit for prayers and lunch. I decided to have Salmon after a very long time and it is delicious. The best part is that I put the fish in the oven and add nothing extra on it, no spices , nothing ( although lemon juice might have been nice ) .Along with it, I cooked rice by boiling one cup of rice with a single knorr chicken cube added to it. Finally a bit of fresh, washed salad to add to the rice and salmon makes my plate of lunch :D

Its 1pm again and I am still awake :(

2011-11-14T01:08:00.005Z

I laid in bed like almost an hour earlier thinking that I will sleep on time today but I guess bad habits aren't easy to break. I thought I will write a quick post before I sleep. :) (this time it will be from my laptop instead of phone, long time it has been ..)

Tomorrow will mark the start of a new week and I really hope that I can break this long pause of not having written any word for my thesis. I have been busy working on different things but it wasn't really focussed. I have no time to waste and I really must try to make the most of the coming week. I hope I have a good few pages written as well as some further work done on my thesis.

Pakistan is playing tomorrow against Sri Lanka, their second match of the 5 match tournament. I am looking forward to a high scoring game with the hope that Pakistan wins of course :P.

We all have distinct personalities and all tend to handle/react in a specific way in various situations. If there is a disagreement, some may perhaps be patient and quiet. Some are pretty vocal and try to explain their point. I consider myself to belong to the latter category and lately I have realised that being vocal, and talking as well as reacting is not always the right thing to do, and it may well be useless if it falls on deaf ears.

I have been randomly checking different things related to electronics and what I want to do next. At the moment, I am not entirely sure, just looking at various things. Perhaps its my way of procrastinating. I have got to focus on my thesis!!!!!!!!!! :/
Check the funny offer I once spotted in tesco, a single cucumber's cost was 80 pence while the price for getting 2 cucumbers was 2 pounds..lol :D

Walk back home at night

2011-11-11T00:39:00.001Z

This blogging business straight from my phone is an extremely cool feature. You get to take a good quality picture and within seconds you can share it with the world. :D
I just wrote 2 blog posts on my way home albeit very brief but still thumbs up!
The following is a picture I just took right now of the road that takes me from my room to my lab :)

Desktop of my colleague

2011-11-11T00:32:00.001Z

I have recently moved closer to my lab and it takes like 5 minutes to walk home which means I can conveniently go home for food, prayers etc and then walk back to my lab and work. I hardly worked today so I really need to make use of this situation and focus on my thesis. Anyway while leaving now, I saw the desk of my colleague , have a look :D

Chicken something

2011-11-10T20:20:00.005Z

Since I wasn't feeling particularly great, I decided to cook some chicken after a long time. I had bought like 1 kg boneless chicken about a month ago and cooking that was long due. I thought rather than cooking part of it, it might be more time efficient to cook all of it in one go and perhaps keep part of it in the freezer. I took some pictures while cooking which I will upload. The first pic is the frozen chicken and it took quite a while to defrost this in the microwave oven.

These are the tomatoes and the peppers that I am going to chop and throw in the pan with the chicken after it is semi cooked:p.

Meanwhile, I allowed the chicken pieces to get cooked in olive oil..

After adding in the chopped tomatoes and the peppers

This is the spices box that I used for this. I also added some yoghurt and garlic and ginger powder...

some frozen vegetables thrown in..

A lemon to improve the taste :P. Look at the size of this lemon, I din't see such big lemons in Pakistan :D...lol

And that would be the final thing ready to be eaten...

A view from my room's window

2011-11-10T14:33:00.003Z

Cricket still charms me

2011-11-10T14:25:00.001Z

Well here I am lying in bed thinking why people are so happy if they survive a serious accident and why everybody wants to take care of themselves and live longer. I have not been in that kind of a serious situation but I was trying to imagine that and I thought I really wouldn't mind. It has to do with my current mindset, I was depressingly sad and I returned from lab to lay on bed as sitting there was plain useless. I have left my laptop in the lab and now I am using my phone. I was playing around with this phone and I remembered installing a blogger application way back and opening that prompted me to write something. Please excuse the brevity of this post, it's being typed from a phone.
Anyway I opened this other application , espncricinfo, to see what is happening there. It was more of a usual habit than any curiosity. And what I read there totally excited me. I couldn't believe that just a mere news of a sport can have such an impact but it just did. See the title below and the score line. These two teams, South Africa vs Australia, have produced some outstanding matches. One of them is this one. After South Africa were dismissed for 96 runs, Australia are 29/9, on course to have the lowest score ever in Test cricket. What a superb display of bowling and fielding it must have been for the spectators in cape town.
I just found a way to take screenshot of my phone screen which I will use to show the news headline and the score line that got me excited.

Lost :/

2011-04-28T00:08:00.004+01:00

I just changed my current's blog address from thedayiamoverthattext to j2dphil back :). It was a very long time back that it was set and I never added anything on blog after that. Today I felt like coming back to this blog and slowly and gradually getting it into part of my routine. Life has been okayish for most parts in the past many ways in some ways, good in others and not so good in certain ways. I will hopefully come to all that later. At the moment, I am just very sad because I lost some files I was not planning to at all :'(. I connected my backup hard disk to check the videos as I wanted to watch a little part of it only to know that they are not there. I searched for about an hour but they are nowhere to be seen. I can't believe I lost them and I can't believe that means I will never ever be able to see them again :'(.

Source

Astrologer's verdict about the semi final's outcome on Geo News....

2010-05-15T02:49:00.004+01:00

I was looking forward to today's game and had taken a day off from work (it is quite usual that I do so on Friday, now I wildly hope that I do work on the weekend)...As most of my readers will probably know :P, Pakistan was due to play Australia today in the world cup semi final. One and a half hour before the match, I was listening to Geo news and they called an astrolger who started telling about how Pakistan is not only going to win today's game but also the world cup tournament...That prompted me to record the news clip (I couldn't find video though :S) and I told a friend that even though I wish that Pakistan win, but if Pakistan loose the game , I will have a reason to make the following video :D....It took me more than 3 hours...

not work and not so boring

2010-04-25T21:24:00.009+01:00

When I came to this country the first time, I opened a bank account (current) and there was no option of an "Islamic bank account" back then. The difference between a normal current account and an islamic account is that, in the latter, the bank doesn't issue loan against the deposit and hence earn no interest for the deposited amount. Later, I came to know that such an option exist (when some of my friends opened that kind of an account). Ideally I should have gone to the bank to switch my account from the current to the islamic one but I never did so back then since I had the understanding that as long as there is a current account, there is hardly any interest (like in my case, I think I was transfered 40 pence or something of that order once sometimes back :S)..Anyway, the other day I went to the bank for some deposit and after the deposit, the following conversation happened...
Bank lady: Do you have 2 minutes to speak to our customer service for different options to get more interest..
Me: Actually, I am not interested in "interest", instead, can you please tell me where can I switch my current account to an islamic account and what is the main difference..
Bank lady: oh, so you are not interested in any interest (*with a smile*)..In that case, please go to the customer service table and they will be able to assist you...
Subsequently, I was told that I can't switch my current account but what I can do is, that I open a new account and close the one I currently have...So I plan to do that soon IA'..

I went to London two weeks ago and towards the end of the trip, I went to the London Science Museum to see an exhibition entitled " 1001 inventions - Discover The Muslim Heritage In Our World"..I had very little time (only about an hour) and therefore, I was unable to look through properly and I only managed to see about 15-20% of the whole exhibition. I was supposed to go there again and spend more time but I haven't been able to do so , so far :(...I took some pictures when I was there and I was planning to write a separate post on it but writing on the topic requires some reading, some research and some serious time ...perhaps I will just upload the pictures in my next post and refer to the relevant site :S...

I have always been fascinated by "globe", more so after I met people from different countries. The other day , I went to a shop and got a cute little globe for 3 pounds..:P..Its quite nice, good quality and can swivel in any way you like :D...
The picture below shows the globe placed comfortably on my table...(eww..the papers make the table look ugly :$)

Work, the boring post

2010-04-25T20:52:00.009+01:00

These days have been exhausting, going through fits of discontentment, not so happy times, okay times and so on and so forth :P...

A new term starts from tomorrow. Each term is 8 weeks long and this is actually a good time to make a nice plan of work for 8 weeks with weekly targets and a time to periodically review progress (although I suck at this as far as implementing them is concerned). I already have some things that I need to do, some readings, literature reviews, some implementation and some coding..(if you have read till this bit, please pray for me that I do end up spending my time well and actually managing to complete work :( )..A very likely thing in the life of a PhD student is , umm...time wasting..It becomes so likely since there are no classes, no exams, and its very likely that one becomes lazy and procrastinate (unless there is a deadline set by supervisor and something needs to be delivered). The most important piece of advice that I came across regarding this is to set a specific time for work (say 9 to 5) and religously stick to it. And the idea is very simple. If we don't know what time we have to work, we will end up not knowing when to work really and hardly work :P...Anyway, the five key things that I have to implement are:
i) I will go to the department every day [EARLY MORNING] (unless I have commitments somewhere else like lectures to attend or a cricket match :P) and set a specific time where I will have to be there regardless of whether I am able to work from home or not..
ii) When I actually go to the department, I will try to spend it doing work and not wasting time just chatting or browsing randomly :S..
iii) I will make a plan with weekly targets and a two month plan... [ I already fear not being able to fulfill this one :( ]..
iv) I will sleep on time because if I don't, (i) is not possible..
v) I will not take my laptop with me to bed before sleeping and watch anything/youtubing etc. and instead allow my laptop to stay on the table...If I am unable to do this, (iv) is not possible...

I am not sure why I ended up writing this. I had been making similar plans many times in the past but they hardly worked, perhaps this post might make a difference...(too optimistic, I know :D)...

The following is a picture I took sometimes back when Imran Khan visited the university and gave a lecture (I found him very eloquent and charismatic)...

The following is a picture I took while going through a street here, some random guy juggling with fire sticks (or whatever its name is :P)

This is the picture I took while the "Live with Talat" was recorded in the union.

5 little stories (forward email)

2010-04-11T13:15:00.003+01:00

1. Once, all villagers decided to pray for rain, on the day of prayer all the People gathered but only one boy came with an umbrella…

THAT’S FAITH

2. When you throw a baby in the air, she laughs because she knows you will catch her…

THAT’S TRUST

3.Every night we go to bed, without any assurance of being alive the next Morning but still we set the alarms in our watch to wake up…

THAT’S HOPE

4. We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future or having any certainty of uncertainties…
THAT’S CONFIDENCE

5. We see the world suffering. We know there is every possibility of same or similar things happening to us. But still we get married??…
THAT’S OVER CONFIDENCE

A doctor suspended for putting cow in ambulance

2010-04-04T17:47:00.002+01:00

A Pakistani doctor has been suspended for using an ambulance to carry home a cow he had bought at a local market, health authorities say.
The doctor had taken the ambulance from a rural health centre near the eastern city of Gujrat, in Punjab province.He was intercepted by police while driving home from the cattle market.
A photo in the Sunday edition of Pakistan's Dawn newspaper showed a large spotted cow tied with a rope to a bar in the back of an ambulance.
Muneer Ahmad, an official at the provincial health department, said he had been "shocked" by the doctor's behaviour.
He said he had suspended the doctor on the request of the police and ordered an inquiry into the incident.
News source

I want to do NOTHING....

2010-03-28T20:02:00.004+01:00

What do you do when you experience a state of mind where you want to do just nothing, absolutely nothing? (like absolutely no interest in studying, reading, writing, watching, talking, nothing...everything sounds so mundane, meanigless...)

and of course, you do know that you are completely on your own,..........

My housemate just walked in (he returned from maghrib ) and he asked me why I din't go to the masjid..I told him of my state of mind...And he tells me (he is like 11 years or so elder to me) that when this happens, you should actually go and pray in congregation and you will get refreshed...

Anyway, we'll see...at the moment, I feel too sad for no apparent reason :S...

image source

where is my enthusiasm?

2010-03-20T20:17:00.004Z

Once upon a time, I used to enjoy various little things in my life to the point of wanting to write about them share , and that partly drove me to write blog posts...

Where has all that enthusiasm gone :S? **me wonders**

I have started feeling not so young anymore and it feels like the transition from youth to being an old guy was too quick :(

Everything comes to an end :(

2010-03-14T16:16:00.008Z

The other day, I bought some stuff and I was planning to blog about that but I couldn't on the day due to other things...and now, I hardly have any motivation to write about it..
The idea of completely anonymous blogging sounds more appealing to me..you can vent out, you can comment on just about anything ...
anyway, before I close (which might very well be my last post here ), here is a useful video...

I turn 25

2010-01-16T12:54:00.002Z

I had my 25th Birthday yesterday , and ALL I have done so far in terms of resolutions/plans is mostly talk with sometimes little and mostly NO action :'(...
When will I change!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I welcome myself back :)

2010-01-05T17:24:00.003Z

Salam to all...

Its been ages, I know...
Hopefully I will resume blogging soon IA'
Right now, I wanted to share the following piece of chat that JUST happened between me and my elder brother while I was chatting from my department.

me: there is snowfall right now in oxford

very heavy

but there is nothing like that in lahore and islamabad

him: there is loadshedding in islamabad

very heavy

Eid Mubarik..AND I am such a foooool!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-09-21T01:30:00.004+01:00

Ya funny topic but the thing is :S...

a while ago, I sent the following email about Eid Mubarak to many friends...

Assalam-aleikum,

May Allah accept all your efforts, fasts, prayers, duas and charity made in the blessed month of ramadan....
Eid Mubarak... :)

Regards,

Ahmar

And then I realised that I have also sent this email to my supervisor :(...Now first of all, my supervisor is veryyyy senior, he is the director of my institute actually, he meets with appointments only and he is a Christian....so when he reads this, I wonder what would he think :$.....anyway, it can't be undone now....it really amazes me how we sometimes end up doing so stupid things.....

On a different note, today marks the beginning of my 3rd year in Oxford and also in UK :)
And the ramadan month that is just over, well it was the first ramadan in 3 years that I had the peace of mind of spending it in one place......I think that is much better than having to split the time between here and back home...

Update I...Ramadan

2009-09-20T20:31:00.010+01:00

Its been soo long that I think I should start with some updates....(although I am not sure if I am going to sustain this blogging given that I don't always find the motivation.....I feel like I don't have any interested readers....khair :P..)..

So ya, lets start with the blessed month that is just over.....I am really going to miss this time..The whole atmosphere, the routine, the people, the feeling, it was all just amazing.....(by my standards which are veryyyyyyyy low)....And for me, it was more meaningful, this whole time because I was not on vacations and had instead, alot of phd work at hand to do...In fact, I had a major deadline during this month (for my transfer report which I will talk about separately in a future post IA')...
The reason I am happy that I had work to do in ramadan and alot of it (really really alot in little time) is because if I was able to manage it along with ramadan, then it would mean its something feasible in the rest of the months too...And one of the lessons I want to share about this month is the simple concept of the purpose of ramadan....It should help us to get disciplined, change (a sustainable one) for the better, make more use of our time....and if I was on vacations, then it would have been difficult for me to later practice having to manage multiple things...Alhamdulliah , the sequence of events that unfolded in my work related stuff ensured that I stay on my feet in ramadan ......And there have been lapses, but overall, I have a good feeling about this month......(I need to reiterate that I am comparing this time with my past ramadan years, so its all about my low standards).....Some of the highlights of this month for me which I would like to mention are:
I had all my iftaris with people , none on my own....(unlike having to eat alone at times during the ordinary days).....The places that I have been, it was always about deciding where to go....I mostly ended up going to this one place which was a gathering organized by people who were arabs ...All the announcements would be in arabic .(that environment actually further strengthened my resolve to learn arabic....insha'Allah I will.....I have the resources, the friends, I really have no reason not to...) I had friends in taraweeh who understood what was recited, this environment is something I never ever got back home...and that is such a push to further make a firm resolve to learn the language because every time I stood, I would so strongly feel the extent that I am missing ....its just tooo much....

I met many new people, people whom you meet while you get to talk during the iftari times....And the best thing about this environment was the feeling of brotherhood and the reinforcement that islam transcends every creed, every culture and every language...that feeling gets sooo strong when you sit in an environment where the only thing that binds us is our religion, when we eat, we share, if somebody would come late, people would offer from their plate....I think this is one gathering where you do not even remotely make distinction based on culture, creed, color, language...And when you go to such environment so often, it just so strongly reinforces the simple concept that every human being , regardless of their language, color, creed, ancestors, is just equal....(a value taught by our religon and a value that you see and experience in these gatherings...).....On one particular day, I remember I was sitting with 5 people on the same table and we all introduced ourselves...It turned out, 2 guys were from Jordan, one was from Sudan, one was from Iran, one was from Saudi Arabia and I of course, from Pakistan....

Another aspect I want to highlight is the friends you end up making....There had been many people I would see every now and then in the mosque but would never interact with...but the iftaris gave me an opportunity to make some new friends..Friends, who sound so well off that its very inspiring too :)....One person I met was a german who was a convert (like 6 years ago), had done his phd back home and was working as a post doc...When I got to know him further, it turned out he could speak arabic too as he had learnt it (**ashamed**)...Another guy I met was well somebody I used to see often in the mosque but we din't knew each other so never talked...now that I met and interacted with him, I came to know that he had finished his phd from cambridge and was working as a post doc....quite well off masha'Allah....
umm.......apart from that, I have been listening to some nasheeds in this month....and I will share this one in particular....
The lyrics are all lovely but I will just pick the four lines that I enjoyed listening to :)...

And though the world sometimes feels cold and hard

And you may feel like you are wandering alone
Do not fear, do not grieve, in Allah place your belief
In his remembrance your heart will find its peace

Ramadan Mubarik :)

2009-08-20T20:56:00.004+01:00

Its been very long...

I just want to wish every reader a happy ramadan.....:)....

image source

I wish I could write more :P...perhaps later....:$
For now, all I can say is that I have alot of work to do on my transfer report :(....and I will try my best to spend this blessed month well insha'Allah and make up for my pathetic lifestyle it has been for quite a long time now!!!!!

so close to windmills...

2009-06-30T11:24:00.015+01:00

Following are a few pictures which I took a couple of months back in Halifax....

thtnqh

its been positive throughout...

2009-06-26T17:16:00.003+01:00

Disclaimer: This post might not make sense to the majority so just ignore :P....

"So everything has always been positive throughout"..This is something my father told me over the phone towards the end of a 1 hour and 2 minutes call that I had with him today...We discussed , I explained what I had in my mind about the car issue in the past and things were explained to me, alot of misunderstanding removed, various things elaborated and many references given to the past. And I was actually convinced that its been all positive, and there is nothing to be bothered about..
I also want to thank my two friends, Sonic and Perkha who listened and gave advices, thanks alot :):)

I don't like pictureless posts so looked through in my album and so I am posting the picture of the london eye I took a few months back when a friend of mine had come over for a visit.(I know it doesn't make sense but that should be ok :P)

Dinky (5 and different colors:D)

2009-06-25T20:05:00.006+01:00

The other day I was standing in argos in the que when I saw this pack of 5 little cars for one pound. I went straight to it and looked through the large pile picking one pack to my liking and immediately bought it. The memory of fantacizing having a 100 Rs note (when I was a little kid) so that I can go to a shop and get this big pack of dinkies having 10 cars inside was so fresh in my head once my sight caught these packs that I din't have any second thoughts about buying it. Wayyy back, I remember mostly ending up getting a single car for 10 Rs..
That day, I was actually wondering as to why did we use to call it dinkies. It turns out that dinky is a word used to describe a "small locomotive, esp. with a switch engine." I had no idea :D..
Anyway, yesterday I did not go to the department reason being having slept quite late a night before. Furthermore, I had a cricket match later in the day and therefore, I decided to work in my room...And whenever I stay in my room, unless there is a deadline, the probability of wasting time are almost one :S...and yesterday was no exception..I looked around in my room and thought that I need to clean my room, desk etc. before I study...(this is what we always do when we think we have to work :S)...
So I did that and also spared one of the small tables for my alarm clocks and the dinkies and decided that unlike the past, this table will only have "decorative" kinda stuff :P which means no books..The picture below shows my study table with books and laptop and also the other small table with the dinkies on them :D...

Later in the day, I had a cricket match which we lost. Not only that but I managed to make just a single run :(...I usually do not bowl but yesterday, our captain asked me to bowl and so I bowled a couple of overs. I had mostly been batting in matches uptil now. I got a single wicket too when this one guy was clean bowled while he was trying to hit me over my head..After the match, our captain told me that I am more of a bowler than a batsman to which I commented that I personally prefer batting..(and I KNOW my batting is way better than my bowling)..What I did not tell him was that when I tried to drive the ball, my left index finger still hurt to the extent that my shot was not timed well and it was a straight catch in the covers :(...(my only reason of not mentioning anything about my finger was that it would make him feel as if I am making excuses so kept quiet )...

I hate it when....

2009-06-25T19:31:00.006+01:00

I hate it when I am unable to gather enough will power to discipline myself...

I hate it when people show contempt to anybody just because of stereotyping..

I hate it when people mock you when you share your point of view..

I hate it when people filter examples and talk about "selective" ones to support their point of view..

I hate it when I am unable to be patient during batting and get out soon just because I wasn't careful enough....

I hate it when I can't bat properly just because I have an injured finger :(

I would surely hate alot more things in life but above are just six that I could come up with...
On a completely different note, I made chutni of tomatoes and chilli and salt in a juicer a while ago...:)

Hailstorm, Cricket and Injury

2009-06-16T14:12:00.009+01:00

"Its more expensive than games like table tennis/tennis/football and on top, its more dangerous too. I will seriously have to think if I am going to play it further here. The ball is just sooooo heavy and on top, there is usually the enormous pace on it too when you are playing".
These were my comments after my very first match of cricket where I scored only 6 runs and was hit twice on the same foot to the point that I couldn't walk with a normal posture for a couple of days. First, I was hit on my right foot while practicing batting just before going out for bat in the middle. Subsequently, during fielding, I stopped an extremely fast coming ball that was sure to go for four but I stopped it using my right leg and was hit in the shin area at the short mid on position. The reason I used my leg instead of hands was the cold that made me not want to use hands. Little did I realize that it was not a tennis ball (something I have been used to in cricket before). There was swelling for a few days there. I even had to go to the GP just to ensure that I don't have a fracture, thankfully I din't :D..
Anyway, watching cricket had been more fun later to the point that I bought my own kit, shoes with spikes etc. and vowed to continue playing and not be put off with such things. I got a chance to play a few games after that and it had been a reasonably good going until yesterday with no injuries...
As for yesterday, it was a 40 overs game and we batted first. I went in to bat at number 6 this time and was bowled on my third ball and my first zero this season :(. It really sucked then for I could have played more defensively. The interesting bit in that over was a hat trick after that :P..Two more teammates got bowled who came immediately after me. Furthermore, a batsman had been out on the first bowl of the same over when I came in. Overall, it was a maiden with four batsmen getting bowled including me. This was the worst collapse I had seen :P...And I was already feeling so bad for getting my first zero this season..
When we went out to the field, we practiced a bit of catching before the start of the second innings. The last catch I took during the practice was a ball that went really high up and although I caught it, it hit my nail of left index finger and the subsequent pain I felt was the worst I could remember in ages. I took the picture of the finger later and the impact was so enormous that I had both sides of the finger turning bluish/black :S...Here is the picture of it, both sides :P..

And when we started fielding, I just sooo wanted pain killers or anything that would just soothe me. And on top, I had done nothing in batting and it made it even worse thinking that I have to stand here fielding for a couple of hours at least. Within the next 5 minutes or so, rain started and it got heavier soon to the point that the play was stopped. We ran to the pavillion waiting for the rain to stop to resume the play. While sitting in the pavillion, I showed my finger to my friend and he suggested putting some ice on it later to help. At that time, I literally longed for ice to give me some comfort. And in the next 5-8 minutes, this is what happens...:D

Yes!!!! There was a hailstorm and in no time, the ground turned from green to white. This was not even forecasted and it was sunny earlier. It was just some patch of clouds doing this. It gave me enough ice to use for my finger and I actually felt wayyy better :D...Guys around were commenting about the awful english weather...An interesting bit I noted then was the selectivity of the hailstorm :P...There was this ground adjacent to ours and it remained green..See the contrast in the next pic...

If you look closely, you can see the adjacent ground which is all green..The white part covered is the ground we played on. This one guy commented that it literally just hailed on our ground!...
Anyway, the game was called off and to make it better :P, my finger was feeling alot better by then because of using the ice that was so much in abundant by then :)..

The balance, the imbalance and the patience/responsibility

2009-05-20T12:09:00.009+01:00

Image Source

"Well the government and the army do not care for the miseries of these people but why is God not helping them?"
This is a question a friend asked me recently who felt very strongly for the internally displaced people of Malakand Division who were forced to leave their homes and belongings in a matter of a few hours. The number of people was way easily past the 1 million mark and the government response reflected either incompetency or lack of care for the miseries of the people or both (in the politest of words I can use)....
Coming to the question quoted, as much as I was surprised by the question itself, I actually din't have any answer for it either other than that I just don't know!But its not surprising to see innocent people suffering all around the globe, people who suffer due to policies that they have no say in, people who suffer just because they happen to be born in a certain place or speak a certain language and mostly just because they belong to the poor sections of the scoiety. This is actually a great imbalance in this world. And this imblance is not restricted to the current era nor is it exactly linked to any specific geographical location I believe. These imbalances exist at different levels all across the globe.
As I reflected further on this topic, I could see a different level where an amazing balance exists. On this front, the balances and the delicacies I see are overwhelmingly amazing. These are the kind of things we all take for granted (since we have them all the time without any effort of ours and it is human nature not to ponder over the things they have like forever). There is alot I can say on this depending on how long I can sit and reflect. I will just try to mention a few things as they come to my mind now :)...
Lets come to the balancing of our ownselves as we walk. It is not a trivial thing to ensure that one is able to adjust his centre of gravity and move with balance with varying speeds (walk/run to his liking) using only two point of contacts (our feet). As kids, our brain grows and so does our skull in perfect harmony. Same is true for the heart and lungs which are protected by our rib cages. Oh and we have 206 bones all joined together which allows us to remain in shape and move as well (from an engineering point of view, this aspect alone is too marvellous). Generally, when a machine has moving parts, you need to lubricate it every now and then to ensure its smooth functioning. Well, in human beings, we also have the lubrication going on at the joints (the synovial fluid) and we are not required to pick up lubricating oil and apply it to our joints etc. Rather, that fluid is manafucatured inside according to needs without the person even aware of it. And that is not the only fluid running in our body. Few of the fluidic systems we have in our bodies each with their unique functions and working in harmony within ourselves and without mixing with one another are:
Arterial/Cardiovascular system, Cerebrospinal fluid system, Air pathways and lungs, Renal system, Cochlear system, Corneal system, Lymphatic system and the synovial system I mentioned earlier (I took the list from an introductory slide in a course on biomedical fluids I had last year). And the production/management of all these things do not even require our special attention or anything specific. They are always happening inside us without us being even aware of them. All this requires some raw materials, some energy, some fuel too. All that is abundantly supplied in this world as well which includes food, water and oxygen. And the variety and the tastes make it not a compulsion all the time but itself a desire. Furthermore, the amount of oxygen in air (21%) is quite balanced too given that even a slight excess of oxygen in air significantly increases the combustibility of materials. And without oxygen, human beings can get unconscious in a matter of a few seconds.
When a kid is born, he needs protection and support. And there is no way, a child just born can survive in this world without any help. To that end, the parents are generally made such that they love their children more than anything else in the world and generally do their best to provide for the kids they give birth to. If by large, parents din't care for their children, I doubt this world with the human race making it to the present.
Thinking about the senses, our ears don't hear just any vibration in the air. There is a certain range of frequencies we are capable of hearing. A greater sensitivity, and we might have been hearing our own heartbeat all the time to the point of annoyance (since our heart just never stops while we are living). Similarly, less sensitivity might have made it difficult for us to communicate. We should be able to see an extra-odrinary balance at play here.
Similarly, our body temperatures remain constant regardless of the ambient temperature and we have different sensors and feedback control systems in our body to ensure that constant temperature. Same is true for our blood pressure where we have the walls of the carriers of blood as one of the sensors to ensure that the pressure remains constant. The amount of radiation we get from the sun and the protection mechanism (like the ozone layer) reflects another marvellous design to ponder over. This list can go on and on but I will come to the point of why I said all this.
In this world, amazing balances exist which are not in our control and if they were not present, it was just plain impossible for the human beings to have even survived. Those are the kind of things which we are simply incapable of managing and no matter what, we can't change those things. But such things are already taken care of by the very marvellous design and exquisite balance.
Having said that, there is a different level where gross imbalances exist as I mentioned in the beginning. Some people in this world seem to get alot without any effort, some people just can't even get the opportunity to do anything. And I mentioned, the recent imbalance right in my own country (and my very own people bordering my hometown where I was born and grew up) caused people to be displaced under no fault of their own. But if we think about it, these are the kind of imbalances which the human beings are capable of sorting out, human beings have been given the power and the capacity to handle such things.
If there was no balance of oxygen in the air or no water in this world for us to drink, then we could have sat down and argued that God made this system this way and we just can't do anything. But those issues are already taken care of and we don't even need to bother about those requirements and balances that make it conducive for us to survive here.
What we need to take care of and think about are the things we have been given the capacity to handle and the brain to think about and the will to contribute.
I will end this post with one last comment made by somebody who said that the problem of malnourishment has more to do with the unjust distribution of food rather than the lack of production of food. And it makes sense to me. I do see alot of food being wasted just because of it being in excess. The human beings have no control over the amount of oxygen in air and therefore, every human being easily gets oxygen without depending on any fellow human being. and so no imbalance exists there. But the human beings are pretty much capable of managing the distribution of food and devising systems so that everybody gets a fair chance and that is where, we see imbalances as well then.
Perhaps a test of responsiblity by God on some section of the society and a test of patience on the other section of the society is at play.....

I am back :P

2009-05-02T19:46:00.007+01:00

So it turns out that I have a single post for April this year, (which is actually the longest time away from blog since I started this one)...I just hope the April of next year has alot more posts and I don't stay away for long in future like I was this time *hopefully*...
I din't have any particular reason for staying away as such...Just a little of different things like laziness, ill-organization, throwing the blogging business way down in my priority list, and far more importantly, because of the following sentence I had written in my previous post..
I took my day off with the hope that I am going to work well (insha'Allah) starting next week following a very systematic strategy to be more organized (which I will outline in my next post hopefully)...
Actually, I had a very systematic way of planning, working my way through things and part of it involved drawing up some weekly targets..I had thought that once I spend a successful week (in terms of meeting with my weekly objectives), I will come here and write a post about it...Things actually din't exactly go as were planned (not that it was all that worse but way below than I had hoped for).....Sadly, I promised many friends that I am going to write about it and so far, I haven't :(....(I am not going to give any timeframe now but will insha'Allah write about it in a couple of weeks)..
Another small comment I want to make involves my work itself (the Dphil I mean)...Since my work is interdisciplinary, the project I am supposed to work on is in collaboration with a clinical research department (and they are all medical doctors doing research)...Furthermore, during first year of Dphil, students normally start working on things with the aim of defining what they are going to do in the subsequent years and are supposed to write a report at the end of their first year (which should include a final chapter on the future work)..Towards the end of my masters here, I was selected for working on a funded project towards a PhD and it had two different projects under its umbrella (both are related to primary healthcare but one is to do with sick children and the other is to do with hypertension)...When I stated work later last year, one project had been running for quite some time and I started working on a part related to it (which was signal processing and I enjoyed all that work)...A few months later, meetings in the clinical department related to the other project started and as I attended those meetings, I was wondering how would engineering come in the picture. At that time, it wasn't clear to me what I will be doing in future but I had a feeling that I might have to start working on the other project which was supposed to start soon (with pilot studies and later clinical trials etc. ) I had developed affinity with the first project I was working on because I could clearly see engineering and signal processing in it. I wasn't clear about how engineering comes in, in the second project. But those meetings I attended, they were all with the clinical researcher and whenever he would talk to me, I would end up wondering how is it engineering and how is it signal processing....My motivation got kinda lower too since I had in mind that my future work might actually involve working in this project. At that time, I was soo looking forward to a meeting with my own supervisor so that I can be clear on things. Later, I had a meeting with my supervisor and that is when he talked about his idea of the engineeirng challenge in the second project which made it interesting again and alot lot clear. Furthermore, I was told that my PhD will involve work on both projects which will be the two case studies which was very encouraging as it meant that the work I have done will come in handy for my final thesis too...In a nutshell, the meeting was very much needed and it clarified alot of confusions and things seemed way more clear and my motivation was back on track.....:D
Anyway, leaving my work bit aside, I talked about going out for some travelling on a weekend. During that time, I went to see two of my little cousins and Sonic asked me about which languages they speak ...:)
And that is when I thought of actually making some clips..Here are the two I have where I am speaking to my 7 year old cousin, Linta...

In the first one, well its all english so no need to translate anything....

This is the second video of Linta...There are some parts towards the end where I speak in pushto and so does she..If anybody is intrigued and do not understand, leave me a comment and I will translate...

Anyway that is all for now, more later (soon this time :) )

looking forward :)....

2009-04-09T20:24:00.003+01:00

I took my day off with the hope that I am going to work well (insha'Allah) starting next week following a very systematic strategy to be more organized (which I will outline in my next post hopefully)...
This is just a little post to add something in here so that my readers can know that I am alive :P..
Today I cleaned my room (I think I always do that when I plan of working well :D ), stacked up the few books I had on table in one column, talked home and then went out to get milk (which I was supposed to get 2 days back but would always forget and it also meant no tea for 2 days) .
While browsing in youtube, I stumbled upon an old old movie (1985, the same year I was born :D ) which I had watched like a hundred times when I was a kid (we had it's cassette at home)..So I watched that movie, the whole of it and it was better now since I understood the language too....I wonder why had I been watching it as a kid so many times when I din't even understand the language, ain't it stupid :P?
Here is the theme song of that movie :)

I am going to spend my weekend at my cousins place. I have two little cousins, one is about 6 and the other about 4 and I am sure, I will enjoy their company for a change :):)

View from the Tower Top of Magdalen College....

2009-03-29T04:12:00.010+01:00

Its less than an hour left for fajr and it is very unusual for me to be awake at this time and it is more unusual when I have been awake till so late without doing anything :D...
A friend invited me for a potluck dinner and I returned to my room at around 11:30 pm but was too tired then and so just thought of resting for a bit before I offer isha. I uploaded some pics in facebook (I don't do that often but a friend specifically asked me and even complained about how I never upload any pics I take, lazy me :P). I managed to get rid of all that work by around 1:00 am (and the time was then changed to 2:00 am as the summer time started). Since I had to pray and I was too lazy to get up for ablution, I just laid in bed with eyes open and lights on and just randomly youtubing lazily for sometime until it was about 3:30 am :$. That is when I got up.
Now its 4:20 am. And I thought its better to pray fajr first and then sleep :P. And I can spend sometime sharing the few pics I took today. The dinner was at Magdalen College and out of the many friends invited, some were married and so people with families brought properly cooked delicious food and we, the single guys who surely can't cook anything delicious :P, were asked to bring the simple not requiring cooking stuff (like I was asked to take tea bags, milk and sugar, soo convenient :D).
The food was great but the highlight of the day was climbing up the tower of the college. The picture below shows the tower which we actually climbed using the very steep stairs inside its structure.

The entrance to the room which led to the stairs was a very old, big, wooden door and the key it had was at least a foot long (I missed taking it's pic :S ). A couple of pictures I took from the top are in order :)

Also I specifically stood close to one end on top and looked straight down to see if I have any kind of acrophobia (I know it wasn't that great a height but still :P ) and my initial conclusion is that I do not :D...

got the book :D

2009-03-27T17:30:00.005Z

Me: What's the price of this one (pointing to the orange juice picture at the counter in a takeaway)
Guy: it depends on what size you want..
Me: Okayyyy *a little amused with the answer*... What sizes do you have?
Guy: that depends on what size do you want...
Me: *with a smile* So what size choices do I have?
And then he tells me of the small, medium and the large sizes and their prices :D

This conversation reminded me of a series of question and answers conversation I had with my chemistry teacher back in A levels which started with a question about some concept followed by 4-5 more questions till he was satisfied that the concepts are quite thoroughly clear :P....

*a minute's pause*

Anyway, this post is just the little news that I got the book I had ordered 15 days back or so :D. Sadly, I don't have the nice habit of reading books as such [I so wish I did :( ]. I selected this book titled "The 100: A ranking of the most influential persons in history" after reading its reviews hoping that I will be able to read selected and concise biographies of the carefully selected important people (call it a short cut to learning about interesting history :P )...
I was a bit annoyed when I din't get this book in my post for so many days and when I was unable to reach the unknown shop via phone given on their website after trying for 2 days, I thought it was some kind of a fraud :$...

Now I hope I can actually read this book during my leisure time to get rid of my not-to-read-any-book-in-my-room-and-only-to-sleep-or-use-laptop-in-my-room ridiculous habit. Also I was thinking of talking a little about every person mentioned in this book in a group of 5 or something as I read along although it will soon become boring I fear.

This ain't whining...

2009-03-19T17:01:00.003Z

...am not whining here but just stating some things to be done in the next 80 hours!

i) I have to write a small report to explain how I tackled a problem and it was supposed to be done early this week but so far I haven't started ...There is no definite deadline but my supervisor is taking the last week of this month off and I want to clear this before that.
ii) I have a meeting on monday and I have been given a few documents to read to follow it with my recommendations but I haven't even started reading them :(
iii) A friend of mine (who was my batch mate in undergrad) is coming from Pakistan today and he will be staying over with me for the next 4 days (which is great in itself although it might have been a little better if it was a different weekend perhaps)
iv) there is a get together at a friends place on monday evening after a class for cooking together etc. and they expect me to cook something too :D (although whatever I cook, nobody is going to eat that :S )...

I am expecting my friend to call me any minute now, so I'll just publish whatever this is.....I am soo sorry for making you read something so useless :P

here is something nice I picked when I was looking for busy in google images :D

Source

A mini silly post :D

2009-03-18T16:25:00.005Z

How often does it happen when you want to wish/congratulate somebody but you don't because you have a strong feeling it won't be liked :S

This sounds ridiculous but I guess it's something I will laugh at after a year maybe ....

Source:

A sheer coincidence!

2009-03-16T22:50:00.006Z

While at work, I send an email at 3:50 pm to my friend cum teacher if we will have a class at 5:15 pm (the term for undergrad students ended and therefore wanted to confirm if the informal weekly classes are still going to continue). At 4:38 pm, I get the reply in the affirmative and so I immediately get up to offer asar before leaving for the class. The distance between the class and my work place is 2.1 miles but half of the ride is downhill and so its quite convenient.
I leave at around 5:05 pm hoping to cycle to the class. As I reach my cycle, I see my bike locked with somebody else's lock (:@:@:@). Now that was actually amusing plus very annoying.
It was annoying because obviously, I so wanted to reach the class. And it was amusing because JUST yesterday, I happened to explain the cycle locking scenario a possibility (in fact, it is the post below). I had no idea that it was something to happen to me today, a sheer coincidence (I don't know what else to say to this ) but what were the odds! I wonder why it had to happen at a time when I allowed just 10 minutes and I sooo wanted to reach on time and why it had to happen when just yesterday, I talked about this and said a picture will make it easier to show..I also thought that locking somebody else's bike with oneself is actually too idiotic to happen often...
I din't have my camera then so just used my cellphone to get a picture of my cycle and felt like sticking a note on the adjacent bike showing my anger and frustration (but I din't).

In the picture above, the black bike on the left is mine and the purple bike on the right has actually looped its lock into my brake wire and I had no way to unloop this other than wait for I don't know how much..(there are at least 4 different buildings close by and it could have been anybody from any of those buildings)...I have left my cycle there and I just hope that it doesn't get stolen...(btw. today I came to know that my colleague in my research group had her cycle stolen near the train station when she left it there overnight and this was the first time it happened to her during her 8 years in Oxford, I just hope I do not have the stealing as another coincidence :D )..
Anyway, I had to walk for 40 minutes instead of a 10 minute cycling and reached more than half an hour late. After class part was very nice today as few of the friends decided to go somewhere for food which we did. We went to noodle nation (or whatever it's name was) and so I ordered egg fried rice with vegetables for myself...Prefering rice over noodles was easy since I wasn't planning on eating with chopsticks (ain't used to that :D)...

This life with its little funny, annoying, amusing, coincidental moments make it a lovely package as a whole I guess :) [I won't be smiling tomorrow though if my bike gets stolen :P]

silly! :P

2009-03-15T09:22:00.002Z

Sometimes back, an email was sent from the main reception of the research building I work in.

Dear all,

Please unlock your bike which locks other person's bike.
The saddle of the bike is covered by a Sainsbury's bag.

As soon as possible please.

Many thanks

AND after a while :D, another email was sent

Following our previous email regarding the bike, unfortunately the lock had to be cut to release the other bike which was tied together by the lock.

Now the bike is kept at reception.

Can he narrate that any better?

2009-03-15T00:18:00.006Z

I believe the story goes: There was a woman carrying heavy goods (or the like) and a young man offered to help her. This is narrated from her perspective, telling the young man not to talk about Muhammad (pbuh). Then at the end she finds out the man helping her was actually Muhammad (pbuh) and then she became Muslim. (from a comment in youtube)

I think it was narrated very sweetly in this video and I wanted to share here :)

Mastering Arabic (A recommendation)

2009-03-14T21:11:00.007Z

Sometimes back, I talked about buying the book "mastering arabic by jane wightwick and mahmoud gaafar, 2nd edition along with 2 CDs".
This book has about 20 units. So far, I have completed the first 7 units. The amount of time I had to spend on doing the first 7 units hasn't been more than 5 hours in the space of two days. (although I did memorize the words given in the small vocabulary sections at the end of these 7 units before).
This book assumes no prior knowledge of Arabic and that is why, it's exercises start by introducing the arabic letters and has numerous exercises including writing practice (which I conveniently skip).
From my experience so far, this book is simply amazing and it is a very fun way to learn the new language (and I mean it). For the past two days, I haven't been reading it by forcing myself or trying hard to sit and study. Rather, the book with its use of stimulating exercises and illustrations make it a learning with fun (and it gives the confidence to the user that their effort is paying off by going through all the exercises). I also spent time reading its reviews on amazon and everybody's review I read considered it as the best book out there..(*thank you soooo much to the person who recommended this book*)
As an example, I am going to upload the last exercise I completed :)

The exercise was actually to listen to the audio recording (in the accompanied audio CD) and draw picture of the things and their positions described (the name of the unit was rightly titled "describing places" ). What I did instead was (*ya , I do improvise :P * ) to listen to the recording and write the arabic above and then translate it on my own and then check the answers. So the picture above shows me listening to the recording and writing it down so that I am able to translate it into english (I had to pause and rewind alot). As you can notice, there is rarely any tashkeel in the arabic written and that is because we don't need tashkeel on every word as we begin to understand the language and I din't need any there :D:D:D...
As for the translation, I will type it here again (and I will bold out the two mistakes I made above in my first and only attempt)...

In the picture, there is a street. And in the middle of the picture, there is a hospital and adjacent to the door of the hospital, there is a tall nurse. On the right of the hospital, there is a black, new factory. And in front of the factory, there is a beautiful, big tree. Under the tree, there is a black, ugly dog. And above the tree, there are pigeons. On the left of the hospital, there is a small school and there is an old bicycle at the side of the door of the school but there are no teachers.

The mistakes I made in my attempt are in bold. I translated shaarah as tree and it was a silly mistake. I know, it means street. And the second mistake was that I translated shajar as a tree and I know, shajar is a collective noun and was supposed to be translated as trees. Rest, I guess its all fine...

I do feel that if one is able to do this much after a few hours of dedicated work, I don't see why I will not want to continue.Today I ordered the companion book of this one too (mastering arabic grammar) after reading its reviews on amazon which were all so positive.

I really really recommend to all those who want to learn this language to get hold of the book I have been using and get through this concise course. And those who already know urdu, I believe they have already done most of the homework.

489 Coins

2009-03-14T20:10:00.005Z

This post was supposed to come last weekend but other things kept me sooo busy that I was unable to upload the picture I specifically took for the blog..:)
So this is the story of saturday (but not today, the last saturday)...I planned to do some work in my room and for that, I needed my flash drive to copy my updated work directory from workplace. I had to ransack all my drawers to my find my flash drive and that's when I decided to clean all my drawers. While doing that, I collected all the coins I had in one place and started counting them (*these little acts are veryyy tempting especially if you have work to do :D )..
To my utter surprise, it turned out that I had a total of 489 coins :S.....(worth 49.xx pounds)...I separated all of them and I am hoping to get rid of them soon (hopefully)

Anyway, the picture above shows the coins I collected. The box has the 1p and 2p in them (its that which I will find the most difficult to get rid of :S)..My flash drive is visible too. I also managed to find my hold mobilink sim (*spot it in the pic :P*) and a Rs 10 note :D:D.. Oh and there are these tablets as well...Incidal (for allergy, flu etc.) and ponstan and ponstan forte for fever...
I will stop now, laterz :)

Cultural Fair 2009 [Part II]

2009-03-07T17:52:00.018Z

This post is a continuation of my previous post on a cultural fair I recently attended. The previous post on the topic is here.

Spain:
The organizer of the stall wasn't from Spain herself but the stall showed the architecture most of which was built during the muslim rule there in the past.

By the way, the current population of muslims in spain is about a million or so. A spanish friend had earlier told me about Mezquita (spanish for mosque) in Cordoba (I think the stone lying in the middle in the picture above was an engraving of the same mosque in Cordoba). This mosque was originally a church which was bought under the muslim rule and reworked and greatly expanded later to become the second largest mosque in the world. In the 13th century, Cordoba was recaptured by King Ferdinand III of Castile and the mosque was turned into a Church.

Algeria:
What I came to know here was the size of Algeria, it is the second largest country in Africa. The first picture below shows some key facts about Algeria (you can click on it if you are interested to know some key facts )...Also shown is some Arabic calligraphy. (I am guessing they are common as decorations there)

The picture below shows some more detail of the stall. There is a lamp, a camel :), and some sweets.
Egypt:

This is a country I have recently developed alot of liking for and the major reason is my friend Radon whom I mentioned previously (the guy who works in the same research building and recently I have been making use of our 5 minute walks for prayers during work time by reading the Ali Baba and Forty thieves story in Arabic with him :D (btw. I have so far managed to read only the first 2 paragraphs) )

The stall organizer was wearing blue clothes as well. And I was told that its an old pre-islamic egyptian superstition that wearing the blue color will ward off evil or something ....

Sudan:
An interesting bit I found about Sudan was that it is the largest country in Africa. The picture shows some architecture, scripture and camels again :)...

The next picture shows the traditional cups, the teapot and sweets :)

Morocco:
This stall was rich in information and I mean it.. Two notebooks with pictures and handwritten texts contained alot of informaiton on the traditional food, architecture etc. (a marvellous effort (y) )..
The following picture shows mint tea which is the national drink there and it usually follows all meals (you can click on the picture to read the handwritten stuff about it).. It was also served there and it was amazing.. (*I am going to find mint tea for myself here, it tastes great*)

Turning over some pages of the same booklet (which talked about mint tea above) shows a picture and text about Kasbah Mosque in the picture below... (*I wonder who sat down and made this booklet, it was all handwritten*)

Turning over a few more pages shows the same booklet talking about Couscous which is the traditional friday lunch (I wonder if we have any weekly traditional food which is common, I am guessing we don't)..I asked if its common to have couscous every friday and the answer was in the affirmative....coool !!!

All right, I guess this is it! The final picture below shows the title of the event (which will serve as a closing pic to this thread :) )...

Thanks for reading :)

Responsibility and Sanity!

2009-03-06T18:54:00.005Z

Sometimes back, I saw somebody advising on a forum about how to avoid flooding other's inboxes and he ended his mail by saying something along the lines of being aware of it and avoiding it is not a choice but a responsibility...
This reminds of how I would tell some friends that just because we have 24 hours internet and just because we use our laptops all the time doesn't mean we have to be online all the time...(I used to say that in jest but coming to think of it again, it makes alot of sense to me)...
Now as I click on my bookmarks tab, the list of websites I have saved is one and a half screen long but do I really need all that and do I even use them at all? Actually I don't and I don't even remember the majority of links now. And that's not it, I have subscribed to RSS feeds of some websites so that any update is visible to me anytime.... All that seemed fine and normal until a couple of days ago when I realised that there are blogs in them and people take note of the ip addresses and that's when I actually scanned through my bookmark links to see if I really need to have such a long list...
So the idea of this somewhat incoherent post is to share that there should be some etiquettes, some norms one should adhere to while browsing or mailing or chatting or blogging etc..And because they haven't been part of our tradiotional education should actually make us more conscious of our responsibilities online....

Before I end this post, I will add a picture of something totally unrelated (but i took it recently during my visit to Wales and the picture will add some color to this post )..

This picture shows a bridge while I was inside a park there..but the interesting bit I found then was that just slightly earlier, there was a heavy snowfall and a little later, the sun seemed to come out....(can the weather in UK be any more unpredictable :D! )

talk less, argue less !!!!!!!

2009-03-05T22:35:00.006Z

Source

The feeling follows a conference call between me, a friend in germany and a friend in poland....

friend: mein tumharay blog phir nahee aa raha, tum bohat ziada sensitive ho jaatay ho is k baarey mein (I am not coming to your blog again, you become very sensitive about it)
me: *in a low voice* haan, yey pehli dafa nahee hai (yup, its not the first time :S)

And it started from a recent previous post of mine related to trying to learn Arabic.
*publishes*

A short-lived disappointment!

2009-03-01T23:48:00.005Z

Cricket game has been one of my favourites for as long as I have been playing video games. Brian Lara 96 was the first game I remember which I enjoyed (played on Sega) and then Brian Lara 99 was the second one which I used to play on computer for a long time...(the competition I used to have with one of my cousin who was 4 years elder to me still brings a smile on my face :) )...

Recently, I haven't been playing any video game at all but just today, I got hold of Cricket 2007 (by EA Sports). I was very excited about my first match which I played in the morning today. But my excitement was short lived as this is what happened!!! (I combined 4 pictures from the first match I played today)...

Yup, the game turned out to be exceedingly easy for me. The top left picture shows that I managed to score 204 runs in 8.5 overs :S...And once I had started playing my favourite shot (lofted drive in the long on direction, anybody who played cricket games know its the most favourtie shot :) ), it was a flood of sixes I was scoring. I got 12 consecutive sixes (lol , I know it wasn't fun then :D ) and 5 sixes in the next over to make it 17 sixes in 18 balls...And no wonder, I managed to score a century in 20 balls :D:D...
Obviously (*hugely disappointed*), I won that match but before playing further, I quitted the game, tried to see the reviews of the game and later, I raised the difficulty order to the maximum (from 2 to 5) and after playing the next match, my disappointment vanished in no time :D...
This is what happened:
I played a 10 overs game and I was batting second where I was supposed to chase a target of 43. My whole team got out in 5 overs and I managed to make only 12 runs!!!!!!!!!!!

So ya, my disappointment was very short-lived and I am looking forward to the challenge and the fun (whenever I can take out some spare time from studies etc., should be fun :D )....
Thanks for reading :)

Cultural Fair 2009 [Part I]

2009-03-01T21:40:00.023Z

Please come along to taste the delights of different cultures from across the Islamic world, and find out how Islam spread to different countries.

The above is a line from the advertisement for a cultural fair organized by the Oxford University Islamic Society. The fair was today which I attended and took many pictures and learnt some interesting facts some of which I will attempt to share here.....

France:
The red arrow and the little rectangle circled are from another pic but I did some editing to reduce the number of pics :P....So what surprised me is what I circled! France has a population of 6 to 10 million muslims!!!!!!! I had no idea of such a large french muslims population...I asked for how the muslims got to be settled there and I was told that many people from Algeria (which was a French colony for over a century) moved to France after the first world war and many more did after the second world war and then some did in the 70s...There are also people who moved from Morocco and Tunisia (and perhaps other countries too)...So there are many second (or maybe third ) muslims who are settled in France...
Besides this interesting info., the stall shows a variety of cheese as their traditional food for us to try (I did some of them and it was nice :) )...
Lets go to another country.....

Brunei:

The first question I asked after looking at the following was the location of Brunei in the world map:

And I was told, "why don't you guess first?"...AND I started wondering and made a wrong guess (of course , geography is not my major and as a matter of fact, not even a minor :P:P ) and later came to know that it is in South East Asia, close to Malaysia...The muslim population is about 90% there although the total population isn't alot in itself..This stall had some very interesting foodstuff...(see the two pictures below)

Malaysia:

The picture shows the various architectures of mosques in Malaysia.. The percentage of muslim population is about 55% here.

Some more pics and food and their traditional fan (from the looks of it, not sure though ) is visible in the picture below:

Iran:

the two picture below shows the iranian stall which had some dry fruit, some sweets, architectural pictures and some oil or something (can't recall now :S)

Palestine:

This stall represented Palestine. There are a couple of olive oil bottles and there is a sweet dish too...

Iraq:

Now this was one of the very interesting stalls and it highlighted the significance of Baghdad in islamic history..

The picture below shows some past muslim scholars whose info. was present on the stall.. (the picture size is quite large and if you want to read the description, it would be possible after you open the picture separately)

Some places here :) (wowwwww )

A little bit of food :)

And the final picture below reads "Home to one of the wonders of the world. This stall is the place to be" :)

*exhausted*....It takes time reformating the pictures and choosing the right ones, I still have many countries left to cover..I guess I will do the rest in a separate post later...
Thanks for reading...:)

Are you feeling dumb?!!!!

2009-02-22T19:17:00.003Z

Today I just wanted to have a simple, random, funny post and I believe I got something to share :)
I saw the following ad in an attachement in an email somtimes back and it made me feel dumb for I did it in a good 12 years what this picture advertises can be done in 60 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is anybody else feeling dumb too :P?

Arabic + Double Yolk Egg :P

2009-02-21T18:25:00.008Z

Sometimes back, a friend of mine here reminded me of how I was interested in learning Arabic (I mentioned that to him before )and asked me to come to the weekly classes they were starting for intermediate learners..And my response was that I prefer self-study and besides, I am least interested in being able to speak and all I am seeking is to be able to understand the Quran if anybody recites it. My other excuse was that I do not know any arabic and I can just read if there is all the tashkeel without understanding any word...Anyway, it was difficult to say no and in the end, I told him that I will just come to the first lecture only....All this happened about 3 weeks back...
Subsequently I attended the first class and a few people turned up for the course. And there, I realised that I am the most dumb student for an obvious reason. I never had any formal course in arabic and there I was sitting in the "intermediate" class. I did know some things but mostly I did not have the requisite vocabulary to answer things even though it was very very basic. I learnt a few things from that lecture but in the very same lecture, I had made up my mind that I will sit and learn things on my own so that I can be a little better in the class..(who likes to be the most dumb in class :) ? )
As it turned out, I was busy in other stuff (and LAZY )and did not spend even a minute throughout the week after my first class and then just turned up to the second class the next week without doing anything :D....A couple of new faces had turned up for that class and when they introduced themselves, it turned out that they also had a formal arabic course previously.....And no wonder, I was the most dumb yet again.....(That's when I was reminded of fight or flight :P ...., either to make some effort and continue attending or run away)
Towards the end of the class, I asked the friend who is teaching about any book I can buy (they used to give us handouts only and said that, that would be enough)...Another week almost ended but I did something positive in that direction today :).....(I think part of the reason for this was that another friend had suggested me last night that first of all, you need to have a book)....Today, I went out to the city centre looking for a bookshop to get the arabic book I was recommended...
I had known of a bookshop in corner near my college but I never stepped inside even after living for over a year thinking that it must be some small shop in a corner. As I entered the shop, I was surprised at how huge the shop was (not that it was something extraordinary but it's just that I was expecting some ordinary, little shop)..The bookshop had four levels (if my memory serves me right) with a huge collection and it was probably bigger than the Saeed Book Bank of islamabad (probably the biggest book shop there)....This amused me :), the very shop I never entered thinking it is some little shop in a corner was such a huge store :D...
Anyway, this is what I bought....

It is the same book I was recommended along with 2 audio CDs... Now I really really hope that I can make use of it and learn the language along with my Dphil insha'Allah :)...

One other interesting thing that happened today is depicted in the picture below...:P

Yup, the picture shows my breakfast of paratha, tea and fried egg BUT if you have read an old post before ( End of Week 2 ), then it would be easy to pick the interesting thing! It was the second time here that the egg I was frying for breakfast had two yolks (chick twins :P:P)....And last time, I was unable to have that as it fell from my hands after getting all excited about it ....THIS time, I was careful and I ate it :D....

thanks for bearing with me :)

Don't waste your time reading this unless u have nothing else to do :)

2009-02-20T15:11:00.004Z

I know, I know its not healthy to watch these TV serials...But what's done is done, I can't undo them now....and I will instead focus on the positive side of things now...
So these few sequence of clips I have been watching today and I know they are not real but I am sure, the feelings they imitate and the reactions etc. are something a HUGE number of people in this world go through and carry along with their normal life..and the thing I loved about friends is that they showed everything in a comical way which made it engaging and entertaining...

So here is the first clip where Ross is immensely jealous of this other guy Mark who is a colleague of Rachel...

Another clip in the same sequence is where the Chandler and Joey explain how Ross is being all stupid by acting the way he was...

Anyway, the above two were a couple of clips from an initial season....

This last clip is from a very latter season and in this one, I appreciated the part where Rachel walks away in the end quietly accepting the reality with grace...

I just embedded youtube videos here and I hope its not illegal, right?

forgetfulness...

2009-02-19T22:07:00.005Z

A part of a conversation I had with a friend a while ago..

Me: Da tu su khrey...(are u eating something)
Abdullah: awo, da wreejay awo chargh mey zaan la pukh karhee oo, agha khram (yup, I made chicken and rice and am eating that now).
Me: ohhh, maataa us rayaad shu chey ma kho hum la rootay na da khwarhaley, maana bilkul yair shu (Ohh, I just remembered that I haven't had any dinner either, I totally forgot)

Following that, the comment of my friend weren't too funny but it amuses me....I guess when somebody doesn't lead an organized life in terms of food timings etc., then it is quite likely to forget as when to eat etc.

Other than that, tomorrow one of the post docs who works in our group is going to the hospital for a couple of hours to collect data from the emergency departments.. And I had earlier expressed my desire to see the clinical settings and how everything is done, he asked me to come along tomorrow....So tomorrow morning IA', it will be my very first time going to a hospital, seeing real patients and the monitoring devices attached and getting all the vital signs recording...
the downside is that I have to reach IBME by 8:30 am , which is pretty early as sunrise is only an hour (or a lil more) earlier...And the only other time I was this early to IBME was last year when my interview for Dphil was scheduled....
I wish I could take my camera and share the pics here later but I can't, it surely won't be allowed to take pics of real patients in emergency department....
anyway, thanks for reading :)

Read at your own risk!!!!

2009-02-16T01:12:00.010Z

Not that it was the first time but unlike the previous times, I was confused about whether to have a lobya with roti OR rice...AND there was some deliberation on it :P and finally it was decided that I will have lobya...
Its a kinda instant food (since I prefer only boiled lobya and not cooked so it doesn't take much effort on my part to prepare the meal I will describe in this post)...

the lobya was available in cans and the picture below shows that...

Subsequently, I emptied the contents in a plate and placed it in microwave for 2 minutes.

The next picture below shows the "naan" which I had in fridge and had to microwave for 30 seconds and the green chilli I cut in pieces and spread on the lobya later..

The one other thing I added along with yoghurt is the dried dhanya and the following picture shows the pack of dhunya..

The next picture shows the lobya after adding the yoghurt, the chilli and the dhania powder..
And all that is needed is a mixing of all before eating it all :D.....
So the final picture shows the meal I prepared JUST before starting to eat...

So after reading the whole post, if you are wondering "what IS the point of all this?", then I am sorry but the topic did attempt to warn..... :P

I will stop now, it surely was enough of a torture for my readers :P...

A few hours out in the city centre on Valentine's Day!

2009-02-16T00:28:00.010Z

Cornmarket Street is one of my favourite places in Oxford and it gets more interesting on weekends. It is quite much like the Mall Road of Murree as there is no traffic allowed on it and so its always full of people and one can walk on it freely..By the way, its about 0.1 miles in length which means going from one end to the other takes 2 minutes *literally*...

It was Valentines Day and I went out with my camera in the hope of finding something interesting to share here....And it just struck me that I will take a pic of all the stalls and/or adverstisements there are on this small strip of road....

The first thing I see is a milk shake glass roaming around :D.....(*not kidding*)

This shake away bottle is actually advertising for the shake away shop, sounds cool?

The next picture below shows a stall trying to convince people that animals should not be eaten and people should eat only vegetarian stuff...(something along those lines, I din't go up or talk to them, but just inferring from the posters on display)

The next picture below shows a stall by the "Oxford Islamic Education and Information Centre" and they aim to provide basic information for anybody interested in knowing more about Islam.

Ahh, the next pic........I had a little conversation with this guy...(find it below the pic)

Me: Hi, can I take your pic? Actually I need it for my blog.
Guy: Ya sure...
(*After I take the pic*)
Guy: What's your blog about?
Me: *thinking* ummmm.......Its just about me and my life here....Actually I wanted to take a picture of all the stalls and advertisements today :).......

Anyway, this was a charity collection for Oxford Poverty Action Trust.

The next picture below shows a guy who was sitting at one side playing his guitar and collecting. Along with that, the white frame which isn't clear in the pic was actually an advertisement for teaching guitar to anybody interested.....

The next picture below shows a stall on the same street which is giving information about the religion of Christianity.

Thanks for bearing with me :)....

Snow, Snow and Snow!

2009-02-15T23:34:00.010Z

"The heaviest snowfall in 18 years in the UK" about the recent (~10 days back) snowfall is what I read in some newspaper. I took many pics during this period and I will share a few selected ones here....

This picture actually covers a very wide view (you will get an idea of that if you click on it to see the extent it is covering :) ). I took this picture from my kitchen window while preparing a breakfast for myself.

This picture shows the side street adjacent to where I live, the route I take while going to IBME. (get an idea of the snow here :P, ain't it a mess?)

That is a graveyard (I *think*, I just payed attention to it now that I took its pic and its already covered in snow but from the looks of it, it is probably a graveyard) on my way (6 minutes walk from my house).

That is the roundabout and the park which comes on my way to work.

And that is just before reaching IBME. Look at the "keecharh" (what do we call it? ) on road, who likes that :S? The so much snow all around wasn't fun after a few days and the pictures explains it exactly why!

And to end, the final pic is what I took at around 2:00 am (at night of course :P ) when I found out through my window that there is a snowfall. I specifically wore a coat and went outside to take pics (I am sure anybody who observed me then must have thought that this guy is a leetle crazy but anyway, here it is :) )

Quote...

2009-02-11T11:04:00.002Z

Just something I got in an email today...

Burnt...

2009-02-10T11:02:00.004Z

Image Source

Nopes, I did not burn a bread like this...Its just a google image but suits well with my theme of burnt food ...

insomniac phase....

2009-02-10T02:17:00.008Z

Its almost 3:00 am (hopefully a sunny morning in my home country right now) and I have a looong day tomorrow which starts with a meeting early in the morning (alarm is set for 6:30 am and ideally I should have been sleeping like 4 hours earlier) and I am YET to sleep :S:S:S:S

(I wish I had a time machine)...
When I laid in bed at around midnight, I SHOULD have been fast asleep by now, but sadly I am not and its been about 3 hours :(...

by the way, unlike the past many days, the temperature outside is surely above 0 degrees and its raining right now (after seeing through the window) and not snowing...which sounds better...

University of Oxford on the recent conflict in the Middle East and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza

2009-01-28T23:40:00.007Z

This post aims to bring to light something that happened in relation to the subject cited above. Full coverage of the complete episode is given at:
http://occupiedoxford.wordpress.com

In summary, a large number of students occupied the historic Clarendon building, which is Britain's largest university library, in solidarity with the occupied Palestinian people in Gaza. Some specific demands were made and finally an official statement by the university was published.

That is the building which was occupied by students..

Below is the official statement issued.... (source: http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/proctors/statement280109.shtml)

Statement by the Senior Proctor

concerning the occupation of the

Clarendon Building

Proctors' Office

28 January 2009

On Thursday, 22 January, a number of students occupied part of the Clarendon Building, and in doing so, sought to publicise their deep concern about the recent conflict in the Middle East and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. As students, they particularly wanted to draw attention to the destruction of a large part of the university in Gaza. They also wished the University of Oxford to make a statement about the situation, and to try to help students from Gaza - who will not now be able to study for some time - by offering scholarships and other aid to help repair the educational infrastructure.

I am pleased to say that the points raised by the protestors have been considered carefully. The Vice-Chancellor has written to colleagues about the matter. He has also asked me to answer some points arising from my own discussions with the students and deal with points that are more suitably made by the Proctors.

All of us in Oxford believe in the transformational power of education and learning. We have a duty not only to hone and express our own beliefs, but to listen and to learn from each other and to speak with each other, regardless of how far apart initial positions may seem. As Senior Proctor I hope that Oxford will play its part in enabling deep and tolerant discourse on a range of difficult problems. This may not produce solutions; but it might lead to real leadership for the future. In the present case, it will be a challenge to the Palestinian community and its supporters and to those who hold other views, to see how well we can all respond to our different initial viewpoints within the academic traditions of Oxford.

The Vice-Chancellor has articulated his view clearly that the views of the protestors were no doubt sincerely held, and that they are certainly not alone in holding them.

Those protesting raised six specific issues, and I deal with them in turn.

1. Free speech. The University believes in free speech and in the right in a democratic society to lawful protest. As Senior Proctor, I cannot condone the occupation of a University building. This is a University offence; but I welcome the fact that this protest was peaceful and good-natured.

2. The Vice-Chancellor’s letter expresses concern for the recent conflict in the Middle East and for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It also notes the recent statement of the President of Universities UK supporting ‘calls for an end to the conflict in and beyond Gaza’. It is regrettable that many civilian casualties occurred in educational establishments.

3. It was agreed that efforts to attract endowments to fund scholarships at Oxford for the most academically talented Palestinian students, to help lessen some of the obstacles to education that now prevail, would be welcome.

4. There is also agreement that help might be offered to restore the damaged educational infrastructure, as it would elsewhere, by making available surplus books, journals and other educational materials and resources. This should be done in consultation with academic colleagues in Gaza so as to ensure that appropriate materials might be provided.

5. As Senior Proctor, I have now written to the Master of Balliol drawing his attention to the protestors’ concerns about the proposed title of the lecture series inaugurated by Shimon Peres.

6. I have decided to raise in Council the concerns regarding possible University investments in arms manufacturers and ask whether the University’s policy of socially responsible investment is being adhered to.

7. Lastly and additionally I report that I have received representations from academic colleagues who have volunteered their time to help teach in Gaza and help during the restoration of university facilities there.

Note: The occupation of University property or facilities, and disruption of the activities of the University, are offences. They are described under the Code of Discipline in Statute XI.2 of the University, and the Proctors have a duty to uphold this Statute. Moreover sections of the criminal law may also apply. In the present case, I wish to state that negotiations with those occupying the building and their representatives were held with goodwill and in a very constructive manner. This led to an early and peaceful departure of those occupying the building.

As Senior Proctor, I can not agree an amnesty from prosecution under the Statutes. However in pursuing any consequent action, I shall recommend that account be taken of the fact that all occupiers of the building left by 19.00 the same day; no damage was reported; no complaints were received from any of the library staff whose offices were occupied; and that two protestors remained behind to make sure the rooms were tidy. In the light of these circumstances I am minded on this occasion to recommend a relatively lenient course of action.

However it must be clearly understood that any future offences of this kind will be viewed as serious disciplinary matters by the Proctors.

soms pics I took during a protest demonstration...[~10 days back]

2009-01-28T23:19:00.002Z

some rambling...

2009-01-28T22:07:00.005Z

I just returned from a formal dinner to which a friend had invited us...We were a group of 7 people and incidentally, two other friends came for the dinner to the same hall and they happened to be seated right besides us...This new person I met tells me about being able to speak persian and I had to reply by saying that I can speak a few sentences of it as welll...And then I uttered them tooo without thinking about sounding silly because of accent or being wrong for a single moment...:S
Do I really need to share this useless info. of being able to speak a couple of lines of a language when a Greek, Turkish or Persian meets me .....Nopes I don't, I will tame down my silly habits....
Anyway, this post is basically supposed to be about yesterday, a brief one... :)

A couple of conversations and an incident that happened yesterday:

Last year, I met a guy during a society dinner who belongs to Egypt and incidentally he was in the same college as I was in ....After talking further, it turned out that he works in the same building where I work. Our fields are different but the building I work in houses very diverse research groups and his work is related to radiation biophysics so I will call him Radon. Recently, me and Radon had started going for prayers to the nearby hospital together during work times. Yesterday, I happened to have the following conversation with him:

me: So how many brothers and sisters do you have?
Radon: I have one elder brother and one younger brother and no sister..
me: (*surprised and amused*)...Really!? my case is EXACTLY the same...now this is an interesting coincidence...

Later that day, just before going for an event, I had another conversation with a guy followed by some introspection...
shopkeeper: Are you from Turkemanistan?
me: No, I am from Pakistan.
shopkeeper: Oh you are our neighbour.
me: Where are you from?
shopkeeper: I am from afghanistan.
me: sooo you speak farsi?
shopkeeper: yes, I speak farsi.
me: Oh I know some farsi.
shopkeeper: And do you speak pushto?
me: Yes I do..
shopkeeper: Oh I know some pushto..."sanga yey", "pakher raalay"
me: :)

The other and the most important thing that happened was however, a mini accident. When I travel to my institute, there is a very acute uphill which means alot of effort while cycling. When I am coming back however, its a really fun ride..(* I hope there was an alternative route and I always had to loose height whether coming or going to institute but that is physically impossible, you can only loose potential energy if you have gained it first* )..So while cycling back, just at the start of the downslope, I was very close behind another guy at left side of a two-way main road...Generally, there is never a need to pedal during this time and the cycle accelerates pretty fast...now this guy in front of me immediately slows down :S and I was so close to him and his slowing was so unexpected that I applied a brake but the cycle slipped into him and it fell as well as his cycle as well as me....My immediate reaction was a sorry to him (blurted out naturally) while I fell and a bit of skin on my left knee cap peeled off (so nothing serious happened)...And at that time, I was thinking it's y fault because he was ahead and I was supposed to see the brake lights when it suddently struck me, we are on cycles and there are no brake lights...And then, it turned out into a bit of curuiosity and I asked him (in a polite manner) as to why did he slow down...And his response was that there was a car in front....He asked me if I was doing well and I smiled, and said don't worry, I am fine and left....
AND I took this little incident as an omen for something. Earlier, I was planning to hold a camera with one hand in future and record everything as I ride downhill....But thinking about it now, if I was unable to control the cycle when both my hands were holding the handle and I fell from the cycle which I never expected would happen :S, I guess its sensible to avoid taking nonsensical risks....

by the way, I CAN make unbroken omlettes now :D

This pic actually shows two unbroken omlettes, parathay and a cup of tea :)

And I turn 24 years and 1 week! [too old :(:(:( ]

2009-01-21T21:26:00.009Z

I don't remember giving any tips or advice on my blog even though in real life, I have done alot...(*What topic can I possibly choose to give tips on*)

ummm......

Exactly a week back, I turned 24 and I wish I was organized enough to allocate time to blogging and blog about it but anyway, let me blog on something related to birthdays....

Yup! Let me suggest some ideas for a birthday greeting for friends :).....(it's surely not an exhaustive list)

1) "Happy Birthday!" Say the two words to your friends with a smile and that would surely bring a smile on their face..
2) Send a greeting card with a "Happy Birthday" written on it to make them feel happy..
3) Send an animated greeting card with a "Happy birthday" to make them feel even more happy..
4) Write a testimonial for a friend on their birthday as an interesting and thoughtful way of greeting your friend..
5) Send a beautiful poem to make them feel special on their birthday..(*shouldn't be difficult to find over the internet :P )
6) Spend some time on your own (if you think you can do it) and write a poem and send it to your friend to make it an even more beautiful present..
7) To make (6) even better, present your poem in a beautiful manner e.g. design the background, boundaries, fonts etc. (depends on how artistic you think you can be :) )
8) Another suggestion is that along with the "Happy Birthday " words, send your prayers and best wishes to you friend to make it an even better greeting than (1)..
9) One more suggestion would be to thank your friend for any good thing you think they might have done to you along with the "Happy Birthday" words to make it a nicer greeting than (1).
10) How about cracking a joke on their birthday while wishing them, could work too... (hopefully :D)

So ya, the above 10 are SOME ways of wishing your friend on a birthday...If you can manage more than one of them, it will make your birthday wish even more cool and memorable for your friend...
AND if you really really want to make a "magical" gift, try to aim for embedding the essence of all of the above 10 points, it might be very very difficult and time consuming and may require alot of brainstorming but if you think you can be creative, have a crave for making something novel, and can manage to include all of the above in a coherent and a beautiful package, then give it a shot and I am sure, your friend will easily deem your gift to be best he/she can hope for...
AND if you ever happen to get such a "magical" present, keep it with yourself as something memorable for life.....such presents are rare to get and it will surely bring a smile to your face whenever and wherever you look back at your past and I am pretty sure, every future birthday will remind you of that "magical" gift!

I hope I din't bore anyone and if you read it till here, then

Thank you :)!

My longest 2008 journey in Air! (a movie)

2009-01-17T23:10:00.011Z

Last year, while flying back home, I took many pictures and made a few clips during the journey....I never shared the clips with anyone thinking it would bore the person viewing it plainly with no useful sound other than the engine's roar....
The one video editing software I had wasn't compatible with .mov files, the video output of my camera :S....A way out of this was to convert the .mov files to a compatible format. I found a website which did this freely....A second problem I faced, however, was that the website wasn't simply converting one of the bigger files I had which meant that I had to split the large file before doing the conversion (too much time and effort :S)....I spent quite some time looking for a suitable FREE video splitter for .mov files which I couldn't find.....And a way out of this was to play the large file in full screen on my laptop, focus my camera on the screen and record again , this time in parts , and then transfer the recording of the original recording back to my laptop for further processing .......And that's what I did with one of the larger file which originally contained a 12 minute landing at the destination video.....So a prior warning is that the video after minute 3:13 could have been clearer if the original recording was directly usable...(if I can find a way to either freely convert this large .mov file OR split it FREELY, I will improve the video hopefully...If someone knows a way out, please let me know :) )...
Another warning is the length of the video, its a little less than 7 minutes which is long enough to bore anyone ....I just hope that you will watch the video without getting bored......thanks :)

A little accident associated with this day was the loosing of my camera cable in the plane. I had to take out the cable as well as my laptop during the journey to recharge my camera in order to continue taking pics and recording and in the end, I forgot to take the cable with me (and later I couldn't find a compatible cable in the whole of Islamabad during my 20 days stay at home which meant I could not use my camera at all back home :S)

A narrative of a typical work day....

2009-01-12T23:35:00.006Z

Just to have some diversity in my blog, I thought of doing a plain narrative of a typical day of mine, something I had in mind since morning and here it is now......

IF I had woken up before sunrise and prayed on time, AND spent some time learning the Quran, my day wouldn't have been that bad....(*I should revise the importance of praying on time, the farz , maybe it will alarm me and motivate me to wake up even if i sleep late*)
I woke up after sunrise :S, offered kaza prayers and then had breakfast.
A little before noon, I got ready, packed my bag, (decided not to take my laptop to IBME, why have extra burden when there is a desktop computer for you and there are flash drives to transfer files if need be), and stepped out for IBME. As usual, I wore the woolen gloves, the woolen socks, the woolen sweater, the woolen cap :D and the overcoat.
Unlike the previous days, it was slightly warmer today, the temperature was surely above 0 degrees and unlike other days, it was raining.
(*I have spent 4 months without umbrella, I should get one today!!!!*)
My cycle was standing in the house stand all wet and I decided to walk to IBME instead. (*tesco comes on the way, so I will be able to get an umbrella for myself too*)...
After about 10 minutes, I entered tesco to look for an umbrella. I found a basket with three types of umbrellas...
i) colored ones (price: 10 pounds)
ii) black color type A (price: 3.95 pounds)
iii) black color type B (price: 1.95 pounds)

(*wow, an umbrella for 2 pounds, how cool was that :D*)
I looked through the stock and they seemed to be of the same size. It seemed the colored ones were expensive only for their color so discarding that as a choice was easy :P....Now in order to decide between ii and iii, I took out one of each and opened (is that what we call it when we unfold an umbrella? :$) it and held it over my head....
A lady in late 40s working there looks at me and remarks, "don't hold an umbrella over your head under a roof, it's bad luck" (*yara kho*), I smiled and replied okay and folded it back. Then, I opened the other type to compare and the lady looks at me again and says " hey it is bad luck, if you hold it over your head under a roof"....I replied politely " Oh yes, see I am not holding it over my head this time :) "....She smiled too....Finally I chose one of the two types and bought and left the shop. On my way out, the same lady saw me again and said " oh you got one", and I responded while raising my hand to show the umbrella I had "yup!, bubye :) "...
It takes about 25 minutes of walk to IBME or15 minutes cycling. I held the umbrella over my head for the first 5 minutes and then noticed the rain to have almost ceased and so folded back the umbrella and held in my hands and kept walking and thinking over random things...The rain started again in about 5 minutes and I continued walking till I reached the IBME. And I realised that it had been raining for most part of my walk (~15 minutes) and I was holding the umbrella in my hands and din't realise for a minute that I was supposed to open it and keep it over my head..(*why do I become so oblivious to my surrounding at times*)....
Subsequently, I worked on the algorithm I had implemented and tried to improve its performance by adding a check on it (setting a minimum level determined by the maximum acceptable heart rate which I chose as 160 beats/minute and it seems to be a reasonable assumption)....I have a meeting about my work on wednesday and I spent most of my day trying my algorithm on different patients data and so far, it is working perfectly fine...(*will test it further tomorrow to see how well it is performing before the meeting*)...I am still surprised that why were people trying to use modern , seemingly sophisticated methods when this simple procedure of differentiation, thresholding and a simple check is producing correct results :S....(*will discuss these things in my coming meeting*)
In between, I went to the chapel for zuhr/asar and maghrib prayers. During the zuhr/asar time, I met another guy, a doctor who was doing specialisation from here and is originally from faisalabad.
The imam isn't supposed to recite loudly in zuhr and asar prayers but I was still thinking that this is a front I am lacking in compared with so many other people...I have never lead a prayer in a regular mosque with a large number of people, never spent any great deal of time learning how to recite with qiraat, never given azaan in a mosque (*its no wonder certain people will hijack your religion if you keep such a large distance between yourself and your religion*) ..
While working at IBME, my father called me on skype on my cellphone..(thanks to 3 network and skype, I get to talk without any charge from my cellphone :D)... He has recently been reading a book entitled "effective motivation: how to get extraordinary results from everyone" and today he told me about some questions he asked from someone (who had a masters in pscyhology) he was interviewing for a job and one of the question he asked was related to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We talked for about 23 minutes, a little less than usual. We usually get to talk almost daily.
I stayed at IBME till about 7:15 pm. I should have packed bag and left 10-15 minutes earlier, could have avoided opening youtube and listening to Avril Lavigne :S....Oh and in between, I felt hungry and so went to the vending machine to get a snickers and then a mars.
On my way back, I went to tesco to get groceries for myself. I got kaju this time :)...(*got up RIGHT now after typing kaju to grab some and eat, this time I hope I don't act like a total "naadeena" and the 1 kg pack stays for a long period, hopefully)......
When I entered my kitchen, my two housemates, the german and the belgian were standing there talking...so everybody returned from their long vacations of christmas and new year and the house was full again...I stayed there, we talked for sometime, I told the belgian friend that now, I will try to avoid talking after midnight and also said that during vacations, I was pretty carefree in terms of using kitchen late night, roaming around etc. :P..He said, its ok, don't worry to which I replied, "I SHOULD be more disciplined".......
Finally I entered room at around 8:30 pm after a seemingly long day....I still had to pray isha, eat something, do a detailed review of my brother's sop, blog AND sleep on time....the last thing seems to be the only thing I missed currently :(....
It took me a little more than an hour reviewing the sop, which I filled with alot of red comments. (*I hope it helps now*) Before reviewing, I spent some time in the kitchen making dinner for myself...(*will have a proper meal tomorrow insha'Allah)..Today all I could think of was frying the vegetable samosas and the chikcen kebab I had in freezer which I did...While frying the samosas, a guy entered the kitchen whom I had never seen before. It turned out that a new guy had moved in the house. We introduced each other, talked a little. He told me about his work, he was a britisher working on something related to agricultural scienes, was a phd doctor, working on some research project. While I was telling him about my field, he told me an interesting link about pacemaker. He said (and I quote :D) "you know, my partner (who isn't my wife), her ex husband's father was the guy who made the heart pacemaker.....and he died just before this christmas"....I remarked with a grin, "wow, that is an interesting connection" and he laughed, and agreed...
Since I was frying the samosas when he entered, it wasn't a surprise that the then three tiny samosas got a little burnt and so before eating, I took a picture of them...(*it had been long since I took a pic of any cooking blunder and so today seems to be just about right for it :) *)....

That's about it, I will sleep now, I hope I can wake up on time tomorrow insha'Allah ......(* would be a surprise for me since it is about 1:30 am now :S:S:S *)........
And if anybody actually reads the whole above, a thank you :)

snowfall captured THIS time :D

2009-01-08T23:37:00.009Z

This post is about my yesterday, din't get time to post it then so here it is now..

I din't work as such this week so far partly because of spending substantial time on the visa process document gathering etc. The other reason was waiting for comments from my supervisor on the report I had sent him a couple of days earlier. Since I did not intend to do any further analysis unless I get comments, I thought of doing some reading and so made a plan of reading a book on statistical signal processing my college had ordered on my request and it has been with me for almost a month now and I was yet to start reading it properly :S....
I could have read and understood alot more than I actually did meaning the day wasn't really prodcutive......Side by side, a couple of things happened which I wanted to put on record..
In order to pray for zuhr, I went to the nearby chapel in the hospital..Its a small furnished room where muslims can also pray at a side....As I entered, there was somebody sitting in the chair reciting (usually its empty)....After talking to him for a while, and introducing myself, I found out that he is a doctor in that hospital who is originally from charsadda and we started speaking in pushto :D...Later he told me that there are only 3 muslims in the whole hospital and so they have at times trouble in praying for jummah......(if one of the guy is not around, two can't have a jummah prayers, that's what he said)

The other thing I wanted to put on record is that there was a snowfall, and incidentally I had my camera in my bag and so captured the snowfall....(I just did some editing with WMM and here is that video)...Along with that, this video will also serve the purpose of showing my workplace and my deskspace ( and my laptop backpack :P) :D....

(I know the text time is not always enough :( , will have better ones in future IA')...

Living by hope (a 3 years old post :) )

2008-12-29T20:50:00.006Z

Since I do not update my blog as much as my friends do AND I have had a couple of blogs in the past, I figured it won't be a bad idea to put some useful bits here too (it will fill my blog and it won't really be cheating :P ).....So here is a post I wrote in November 2005 , more than three years old....the same year when a disastrous earthquake wrecked the Northern part of my country affecting thousands of people....

Isn't life amazin........Just about 20 hours earlier, my mood was awful and i started writing something which i deleted coz din't feel like posting it and NOW, just in a matter of 20 hours, i am feeling extremely glad...And why is that, the reason hardly seems to be good enuff so i'll move further.......
Hope!!!! Its hope that makes us look forward, look forward to things that we HOPE to see as reality one day,we are excited...I don't know much biology but i am sure that hope alone will have the potential to stimulate our glands to secrete adrenaline....
Anyway i have been absent for quite some time, fell short of a promise tooo, and obviously many thing happened....Things always happen u know......
Yesterday i read about "Edwin Howard Armstrong", a small reference was given in our communications book so i went to the relevant place on net...According to our book, he must be considered the father of modern FM. Anyway the sad desmise (suicide) and his biography is surely an interesting and useful read. Biographies about important people in history definitely gives us a broader outlook and perhaps a clearer path of what we want and what we should do with our lives.
Life is soo uncertain. You never know when is your last day. There have been many deaths near me in my recent past, a disastrous earthquake wrecked the northern part of my country, four young boys (of my age) and of my hometown had a fatal road accident and my uncle's death....And i am sure none of the former mentioned had even thought of death.Of course everybody thinks about their death but my point is that they wouldn't have lived their last few days thinkin that its the only few days that are left.....
So whats up with me..I am no different..I don't know how unexpected my death would be..BUT its this hope that makes us look forward to things, isn't, we live by hope......
I really din't want to produce what i have right now..In fact, there wasn't much in my mind when i started writing this..One reason was that i was making vain attempts to study and then thought its better to write something instead....(after a long time)....

introspection manifested with a tad bit of extroversion embodied in an incoherent flow of words...

2008-12-29T17:17:00.008Z

Ya I know, the topic is uselessly stupid but hopefully not the words that ensue ...(just some random thoughts which I wrote down)

This is about the blame game which virtually everybody has played at some level in their lives...(I wouldn't spend time talking about the ones between countries, nations etc.)...Let me talk about a personal level, my very own self...
I din't really work today so far, got up late too and for a looooong time, I was blaming my own circumstances for my inability to be a little more organized, to work regularly, to have a proper time for everything....There are certain things that get to me and the question is, whether I should blame my circumstances that are beyond my control OR shall I blame my very ownself and act...
There are numerous occasions where people BLAME things for their own lack of achievement, wrongdoing (on a bigger scale)..And that's the kind of mentality people inherently do not appreciate but today it seemed like I am gradually falling for the same deception.....
I can either have a casual attitude to many things and allow my nafs to take over me and BLAME everything on circumstances OR I can choose to understand my circumstances and tackle things accordingingly...This follows from an advice I have given to friends many times which is "try to excel in a GIVEN environment and not in an IDEAL environment"....

On introspection, I made this important conclusion: It has been my very ownself, my attitude, my mentality, the thought of putting everything on circusmtances (effectively blaming it) and dampening the will which can potentially drive me to change certain things in my life...

The above were just some thoughts that I wanted to jot down without trying to give it any structure so just to let you know (if anybody reads this crap :P ), things are good at my end and will be better in future insha'Allah :)

no picture for this post!

Nightmares!

2008-12-28T07:33:00.005Z

They CAN be ugly...very very ugly...(especially if your dear ones are on a different continent)
Good thing, I woke up well before sunrise, prayed on time but there isn't any more good than that to it (and so nothing else to put on record)

On my way to the college...

2008-12-25T12:33:00.009Z

Ironically (for me) being ill organized, not working enough, not having a proper routine, correlates very strongly with not updating my blog.
This folder with the name of Friday Blog remained on my desktop for long and should have been up as a post many days earlier...
On friday morning, while going to my college for something (can't recall what that something was now :S ), I happened to have my camera in my bag and so decided to use it for my blog if I come across something interesting....
So, on my way, I saw this guy who stood still and acted as if its a statue.....

Just in case, anybody is wondering if this was a statue, here is a video to prove otherwise :P

Anyway I moved further thinking I have now enough substance for a silly post but saw many pigeons on road and thought of making a video of them as well with the hope of having something interesting and luckily I did.... :D
I caught a pigeon crossing the road on its own....(they seem to be in constant motion and their heads seem to oscillate non-stop)

Let me end this post on a serious note. This is surely a very silly post , no doubt :)...I am yet to fix a proper routine for myself where I have time for work and later for myself..Things have mostly been not so good lately, sleeping late, waking up late :S..There are soo many interesting things I have to read, understand, learn but it seems like they are just my wish list :S.....The other day I read somewhere that procrastination is the biggest success killer (very true indeed!)........

MAZAK hay yeh !! (This is a joke!)

2008-12-16T20:17:00.004Z

(Copy-paste starts here!)

Rules:

* IT’S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS!
* TAG 10 PEOPLE INCLUDING THE ONE THAT SENT THIS TO YOU.
* USE THE 1ST LETTER OF YOUR NAME TO ANSWER EACH OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS.
* THEY HAVE TO BE REAL PLACES, NAMES,THINGS. NOTHING MADE UP!
* TRY TO USE DIFFERENT ANSWERS IF THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU HAD THE SAME 1ST INITIAL.
* YOU CAN’T USE YOUR NAME FOR THE BOY/GIRL NAME QUESTION.

(Copy-paste ends here!)

SCATTERGORIES:

1. What is your name: Ahmar

2. A 4 Letter word: can't think of any :S...Okay here is one ..ASIC [thanks u :P]

3. A Boys Name: Asfandyar

4. A Girls Name: Aisha

5. An Occupation: Accountant

6. A Color: Auburn (thanks google :P)

7. Something you wear: apron (I do not but I take you as a common noun here )

8. A Beverage: Apple Juice :D

9. A Food: Apricot , :)

10. Something found in the bathroom: Alo Vera Shampoo (I don't use it but its something u CAN expect in a bathroom :D )

11. A place: Attock (ya, why go abroad if its right in ur own country :) )...

12. A Reason for being late: Ache (like a headache, backache etc. (perhaps))...

13. Something you shout: Arrey!!

I WILL tag BUT if someone can explain how that is done in posts, I shall be grateful ...
I got it now....Here they are although 2 of them have already done this....khair...(just for completeness)..

Uni, Glow, Yasir

This post took me sooo long that I do not have the energy to look for it myself now :S...

Its sheer perfection, my precious G-Virus [an old, favourite line]

2008-12-12T18:34:00.006Z

Disclaimer: The movie, names, characters, etc. are copyright by Capcom. The person who made ripped this video along with additional info., its all there in youtube, please refer there for more info: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BnH5oVqyWEQ&feature=related

I just thought, I will put up a post of some old memory :)

This is the EXACT video I was looking for :D...Resident Evil game was one of my favourites and this game (RE 2), I played it innumerable times, in fact, this is one of the few games I still have on my laptop although its been pretty long when I played any game...

The place which is shown in this video, the lab, and the underground facility, and the automatic doors, they were once sooo fascinating to me...And the game allowed me to move around in this facility for hours, it sure was fun....
Thank you Capcom!

Farewell to PLT

2008-12-12T17:38:00.006Z

I met PLT on the very first day when I moved to the new house after returning to Oxford this year. I remember the moment when I first met PLT who was sitting all by itself in a corner in the kitchen. Since then, PLT spent most of it's time in my room and whenever I ate in my room, I was always, (literally ALWAYS) accompanied by PLT. It had a quality which made it special (I will mention the quality in the end). One thing which I should have realised was the care I had to take while interacting with PLT. PLT was delicate, and brittle but :(....the other day it fell from my hands and it broke....Here is it's picture...

Yes, PLT was the plate I used...The quality of PLT was its size, it was big enough for me to use no other plate during breakfast (parathay and egg would easily fit in and a cup of tea as well) and that meant, less washing and so less effort :D...
After its demise (when it broke :P ), I had no other option than throwing it in the bin but before I did, (out of courtesy), I washed it with detergent in the sink to give it its final wash, took its pic and then threw it in the dustbin....Goodbye PLT, may your material be recycled for making more useful stuff :)....Below is the final picture after it was washed (moments before it was thrown away :P )...

This too shall pass...

2008-11-25T20:54:00.007Z

I was coming back from the RSL (library) a while ago thinking about whether I should delete my current blog or stay on....This reminded me of what I did wayyy back with my orkut account and how stupid I felt later...The only explanation I gave then was a suffocating feeling of nostalgia which is unbearable....Maybe this time I should give it a rest and let the time pass ...
Anyway its alot of things, all seem to be going wrong in life....like THIS is how my day went today :S...
My plan for today WAS to wake up on time, pray, go to RSL by 9 am and study and come back by 1 pm, take a break, for lunch/prayers etc. till about 4:30 and then go to RSL and come back at 10 pm...(the reason for this planning was to cover for the past so many days I have not worked at all)
Well, what happened was that I woke up on time, prayed, slept again :S and anyway made it to RSL by 10:30...I stayed there till 1:00 going through various books, striving to understand a topic which by 1:00 it seemed I do not have the requisite background for every book I tried to read, I would find it next to impossible to make sense of all the equations and derivations :(..Anyway by 1:00, it seemed that I have found a good book (which according to Amazon customer reviews was highly recommended for self-study and was deemed very clear and easy to read)...So I came to my room then, prayed, ate, talked to my father, did a bit of youtubing and left for RSL to reach there at around 5:30 :S ...
Now the book which I thought will make sense to me, well it did not, not at all :(...I tried to read from different sources and so far, I am yet to understand to proceed...But thats not the complete picture, in between all this trying to read bits, I was coming to computer, browsing, looking at blogs :S, had all sorts of weird feelings (which I wish I was oblivious to)...Now I was supposed to say in the RSL till 10, things got soo suffocating by 8, I tried to stay on ....AND by 8:30, I decided , thats it!, I am leaving...
So I left to cycle back to my room (10-15 minutes cycling)....It was dark (it gets dark by 5 these days) and in the middle, I realised that my bike lights are inside my backpack :S...(thanks God, I wasn't busted)...Anyway as I said before, all the way to my room, I was thinking about this blog business and how can I be just "normal" (perhaps by leaving this thing all together)....
When I entered my house, I met a new guy who had just moved to the house and we introduced ourselves and he asked me a couple of questions.The guy was german and (I think) a post-doc in pharmacology or something...Ideally all this should have been fascinating but I couldn't get out of my own suffocation to feel anything....So I went into my room and there I saw my friend messaging me on facebook
"salam bro! din c u today at SBS... r u ok?"
For a moment, I stared at the message thinking what is SBS? Oh the Said Business School , I had a lecture I was SUPPOSED to attend :(, I missed it again....This is a series of 8 lectures on 'buidling your own business" and at the end of the course, one gets a certificate as well and the condition is to attend at least 7 lectures...I had registered in this course with alot of vigour and had attended its initial 2 lectures, last week I missed because I reached a little late and after that, it was clear that I can't afford to miss any single lecture...I was cursing myself last week for turning up late and I had decided things would be better next time and look at me :(...(leave alone getting late, I did not even remember there is a course and a lecture) I couldn't help yelling at my ownself, and I had received an email reminder yesterday tooo :S...Look at my status, I was supposed to start well, do well , make the most of my time but things have been just worse and worse...I missed this lecture and also the course now, gone
just gone.. ...I had also started attending the lectures of "Scientific Computing for Dphil Students" but left that soon intentionally thinking I will do them on my own, done nothing after that...

I just don't know what to do, how to feel normal again, how to start living normally and how to focus and concentrate...... A friend told me a few days back that we, humans are emotional beings, we aren't rational robots....YES, we are...
If I stay on blogging, I will have better posts in future insha'Allah....

2008-11-16T02:58:00.004Z

Oh God!
Can't sleep, this flu is killing me :S:S:S:S
I just took the second tablet in more than one year right now...There is a little more I want to add here so that I can remember the feeling I have had....."Some things are better left unsaid".....
I hope I DO sleep now........

End of week 5

2008-11-16T00:13:00.005Z

One of the better weeks, I must admit...I have begun to feel that I will insha'Allah improve on my routine and get closer to what could be described as the "ideal" one...
The highlights of this week are a 4 hour meeting with a list of agendas I did not have a good idea of, partly because I just started and the meeting was the first of its kind. Apparently, there are a number of different projects under different work streams and the meeting was supposed to be of all the stakeholders in the diagnosis group (and I am one of them). One thing I found interesting was the reaction of a doctor (who had recently joined the group) when he was told that the breathing rate along with other vital signs like heart rate, oxygen saturation etc. are measured in children with a small device placed on finger (non-invasively of course)..I will talk more about how this is done in a separate post but it seems that the idea sounds interesting to those who haven't heard about it before...
Another thing that happened in the same week was a talk by Moazzam Begg and James Yusuf Yee and the topic was "From Night Flights to Black Holes: Prisoners of Injustice in the 'War on Terror' . The room was completely full and since I am usually late at everything, I had to stand at the very back for about 3 hours (very tiring indeed)...
There was a debate in the Oxford Union on thursday on the topic "This house believes that the world is better off without religion" with 2 atheits in proposition and 2 christians in oppostion. I had some very useful points in mind and I hoped that I will talk about them if I get a chance but the more interesting thing that happened was that I couldn't get in the debate at first..:D.......
The chamber was soo full that (since I was late as usual) I could not get in and so I waited outside for more than 20 minutes or so with the hope of getting in if someone comes out. I was able to get in and listen to the debate from the top but again I was standing for almost the whole time and it was very tiring. Furthermore the whole debate was not at all interesting and I hardly learnt anything :S...
Ahh, on the very same day, before going out for the debate, I cooked a chicken biryani and I will have a separate post for that (hopefully after this one).....
Other than that, well I will leave it at this :)
To add SOME colour to this post, let me put up a picture of the union while the last speaker was standing and that is when I got a chance to come down and at least sit....

A Sunday..

2008-11-15T22:43:00.005Z

This post is about my last Sunday, its almost a week late now :)

I am forgetting this bit a little but I THINK I was working in Matlab in the morning and compiled a report to be sent to my supervisor........So that's what I was doing all morning and talked to a friend back home for like three hours or so in the afternoon....Subsequently, I was browsing through some blogs and got to a blog of my other friend. That led me to another blog (a senior from my undergraduate institute) and that's when I realised that I SHOULD have have been what I thought I would like many years ago but I am not even close :(.....It isn't a particular goal I wished to have achieved BUT its the way I have lived in the past few years and the kind of life I have been leading so far which nauseates me :S...The one thing I was thinking about was the importance of time and how I have been wasting soo much of my life on trivial things and I was reminded of a saying by the last Prophet in this world, Hazrat Muhammad (s.a.w.w) that:
A man shall be asked concerning five things on the day of resurrection: concerning his life, how he spent it; concerning his youth, how he grew old; concerning his wealth, whence he acquired it, and in what way he spent it; and what was it that he did with the knowledge that he had.

This surely did not feel good to realise that I have been wasting my time throughout....Later, I called my friend Shakeeb and talked to him about what kind of person I had HOPED to be at the time I entered giki and what I actually turned out to be.... The talk led to talking about some old times at giki and that led to going to our yearbook and going through different comments by different people etc. I want to share the comment I wrote about my friend Shakeeb back then:

If there was someone i would have wanted to be after my four years in giki, then thats him. Among all the people i perosnally know, nobody knows the importance of time as much as he does. Every decision of his seems so well informed, the courses he has to takes, the books he is supposed to read and the manner in which the time needs to be spent. He holds a unique place in my friends list and i really feel lucky to have a friend like him. I came to know him in the first semester and ya, this guy is yet again one more reason why i'll cherish my time in here. I owe him so much, the discussions we had, the arguments,there has been just so much.. Let me recall a few things to put it on record here (for future ;) ).....(1 from each semester) --1)My feeeling of getting failed in MT101 and he teaching me how to find the complex roots of unity... --2)Being so low in PH102 and still managing A all because of him teaching me the dielectric slab problem minutes before the paper.. --3)wowww, how can i forget the endless arguments we had to draw out a clear difference between a flip flop and a latch....(mano vs floyd ,,lolz ) --4)The Electronics 1 lab where i used to be the last one to leave most of the time along with you for the reason that you din't want any chaapa work, and the working for hours and the circuit not working.... --5)I can't recall when exactly did i send a batch mail.. --6) ASIC project and you for the first time getting frustrated and annoyed with me in the ASIC lab to the extent that you shouted on me :P..... ASIC project was fun neee? ;) --7) DSP,,,,,do i need to mention nething?u finally agreed tat the course was delivered well...... --8)NOW????lolz Apart from that, the times we have spent together when you coming to my room or i coming to yours and we discussing things for hours without realizing the hours we have spent... Shakeeb loves talking, explaing ideas..And ya he is fasicnated by quantum mechanics coz he has read mathenatics free books on the subject :P..... The nudge fight on msn and how can i forget the irc chats full of sarcasm n fun...Neway there is obviously too much ....The point is that you really deserve alot in life reason being the importance you give to time....I really wish you best of luck and of course we are going to remain in touch insha'Allah, no doubt about that of course, its been simply great knowing you.....

We talked about all this for 2-3 hours, er...
So this feeling of valuing one's time, it isn't new, its reflected in the very first sentence of the yearbook comment I wrote :S....
Here is a first page of a diary I had planned to keep back in 2005 AND needless to say, it doesn't reflect any different feeling either..

I entered giki (my undergraduate institute) when I was under 18, now I am 23 and when I look back, I feel the only thing I have been doing is "all talk and no action"...I wonder what does it take to follow what one understand and feels and believes is best for him, perhaps will power :S?? There surely IS something I am lacking..... that is all I can imagine for now...
*leaves the chair*

End of week 4

2008-11-10T23:43:00.005Z

Right now, its almost the end of week 5..OMG, when will I start being a LITTLE organized....!!!!
To be honest, I do not remember much about the 4th week now...
I should have worked alot more but I guess I should not feel too bad about the progress.. I need to do alot of reading, and some relevant courses should be revised too :S...
The ONE thing I will mention about my last week is a lecture by Jorge Cham, who got his PhD from Stanford and is very popular among graduate students for his phdcomics.com. The lecture was too good, he talked about his interesting theory of procrastination (UTOPIA: Universal Theory Of Procrastination In Academia) and showed why it is good :D:D:D...He gave the example of Newton sitting under a tree when the apple fall and said that see, Newton was procrastinating there as he sat under the tree and not in a lab when this apple fall incident occurred... the whole lecture theatre bursted into laughter upon hearing this...
The motivatometer presented was awesome too...showing how highly motivated a person is when he enters a graduate school and how hopeless things become in a couple of months when it is found after extensive literature review that the work sought is just impossible :D..
Another thing worth mentioning in this week is a debate I attended on "This hosue believes that Capitalism can save the world"....One of the speakers in proposition was "Peter Stringfellow" whom, we were told, remains Britain's most notorious playboy, having claimed to have slept with over 3000 women..... I did not like his talk for having any useful content, the acting was good though...A communist politician by the name of "Harpal Brar" spoke in opposition and his talk seemed to be well researched, that's what I thought from the way he spoke...I don't even remember their points now, all seemed to have been forgotten now..perhaps I should be writing things more in a personal diary or something of the like, something that was suggested in a HM101 course during my undergraduate studies....
disclaimer: (for prospective phd students) the views and the ideas presented in phdcomics are for fun only.... Please do apply for a PhD and please do enjoy this amazing phase of life :P

End of week 3

2008-11-10T23:20:00.004Z

As I settle down, "End of week x" will be more on time, that's a hope :)

*deep sigh*

Yet another reason to mock myself!!!!!! I couldn't even write my "End of week 3", let alone doing it on time...Like before, I am still really really looking forward to that "ideal" routine which I have in my mind AND which I wish to follow EVERYDAY.......
Talking about week 3 briefly, the two things to put on record are:
I placed an egg for boiling and totally forgot about it. I probably went about 1-2 hours later to the kitchen for something else and saw THIS:

The funny thing was that a friend called me on the very same day after he was sad about a little accident that had happened with him. Upon inquiring, he told me that he had placed three eggs for boiling and all got burnt as he had forgotten about them.....hahaha, what a coincidence that was.... :D

Moving on, there was a snowfall, not much , a little. But I got pretty excited at the thought of a snowfall (afterall it doesn't happen where I grew up :) ) and it was in a month I wasn't even expecting. So I talked about snowfall to a friend and in order to do some convincing, I took a couple of pictures of the snow falling (I found it very difficult to capture the snow in the air in a picture , partly because it was night perhaps,)...
SO I proved to my friend that I was silly, not that I had to :)..Here is a picture I took on the very same night outside...

End of week 2

2008-10-28T23:52:00.005Z

As I settle down, "End of week x" will be more on time, that's a hope :). This post is at least 2 days late :S..
Talking about work, I am not satisfied with myself, I really should have done alot more reading, I din't do much. I just hope this changes. I managed to do the first task I was assigned and again, I could have done that alot earlier, so I should say, SAD as always ....
I am taking this course "Scientific Computing for Dphil Students", and its taught by Professor L N Trefethen, but but but I haven't read anything outside his lectures so far and its not surprising that I hardly follow what he teaches, sad YET again...
I joined the Oxford Union this week, and attended a talk by someone (supposednly someone renowned but don't know the name :D ) about global warming. I wish I knew the topic before, would have done something more useful. There was a freshers fling at the union which I, along with some other friends, attended but nothing worth mentioning.
Lemme talk about something a LITTLE interesting than the boring bits above..
In the one year that I have started cooking for myself and also the only year I have done so in life, I came across an egg with two yolk (FIRST TIME) as I was preparing breakfast for myself, like I always do every morning/afternoon......Here is the picture of the egg I took while still in the frying pan...
Incidentally my neighbour came to the kitchen and he was very surprised to see a single egg with two yolks. All I said was that just like human beings have twins, chickens can have twins too , don't know how correct or otherwise this is :D....Anyway as luck had it, I was unable to have this breakfast :(.. When everything was prepared, (parathas,the egg and tea) and I was about to leave the kitchen for my room, the cup which was placed beside the egg in this big plate I have, it fell right on the egg breaking both the yolks and spilling all the tea in the plate soaking the parathas in this weird mixture of egg, and tea.. :S....Disappointed as I was, I had my camera in my hands so I took another picture of my "supposed" breakfast before throwing it in the bin(I tried to eat but couldn't )...

I din't have time to prepare everything all over again as I had to rush to a class so just had an apple and left my house....

Chicken Biryani....

2008-10-12T22:26:00.002+01:00

Me: Yaar yey tu nay cooking kahan say seekh li, saal pehlay tau tujhey bhi kuch nahee aataa thaa.. [ How come you learned to cook all these things now, you din't know how to cook anything last year ]
Mudassar: Bus dekh lay, mein nay tau pehlay bataya nahee tha tumhay, mein tau expert hun cooking mein :P... [ Well I knew cooking pretty well, I just never said so ]..
Me: Chah gaya hai tu [ You rock! ]

This conversation took place after my friend came to my place and we decided to make a dinner for ourselves..We bought all the ingredients at Tesco and I was so excited that the chicken biryani masala I brought from Pakistan from my recent visit will be put to use....

All seemed so promising, we worked together in the kitchen and the novice that I was, he was leading and I was asking different questions on every step hoping to reproduce the effort on my own in future.
Finally when it was supposedly all cooked, welll, it turned out that there was a THICK burnt layer of rice and the rest of the rice, well I enjoyed eating it but it sure was a disaster for Mudassar.
I enjoyed the mocking and the expression on his face and the feeling.... I mean he wasn't supposed to make a mistake given the anticipation and the claims....
Anyway we ate whatever it was and I enjoyed the outcome soooo much that I made a video of him sitting and listening to some sad ghazal/song after eating that burnt biryani.......I also took some pictures of the burnt rice to put it on record......

. Our Chicken Biryani :D

Post-cooking and eating conversation :):):)

:) doesn't mean a smile ALL the time :)

2008-10-10T21:37:00.002+01:00

just because I use emoticons ALOT while I talk online doesn't mean I don't feel :)
Now there is a smiley in the last sentence but its just sooo full of dejection....
illusions they are, and that too virtual as someone rightly said before :)

..ANd it starts!!!

2008-10-05T10:23:00.002+01:00

The house I live in, my room is right at the front on the first floor

The window at the front where the light is lit, that's my room...Its early morning on a Sunday, I am sure everyone else is asleep :D

That's the desk and the window in my room

I took these pictures early in the morning specifically for this blog. I am back in Oxford and my induction for PhD will be tomorrow which will be followed by my first meeting with my supervisor. There are some resolutions, some pledges which I wouldn't mention here but I am really looking forward to my Dphil here and I hope I can end up contributing something significant to the field I am working in.