Friday, April 29, 2005
New Skin
No, I have not gone over to the dark (green) side. The green just seemed very spring-y and much lighter than the old skin, plus a change is much overdue.
Misha
at Friday, April 29, 2005
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005
A/C
Today was a very hot day. And I know, fellow Karachiites, or anyone who's ever visited Karachi in the summers shall probably raise and eyebrow and shrug at this statement since Karachi is a city which is very, very hot approximately eight months out of twelve. Today, however, took the heat to a new level, and I'm not just saying that because I got my rear fried on the leather seat of a car parked in the direct sunlight all day. Despite a firm offer of a ride home from the university from my aunt, I decided to brave the heat and take the bus home. I knew starting out that if I was very lucky, I might get a bus with working air-conditioning. Luckily, I did manage to get the sole UTS-21 in the city with air conditioning that still functions and gratefully stepped aboard.
Once on board, while filling in the gaps between the rhythmic wheezes and vrooms of the bus with finger-tapping, I realised something that most of you have probably thought up already in your travels: Air conditioning is the great divider in our city, the grand line that divides the "have-too-much's" from the "don't-have-none's". Look around in any busy street. There will be people with air conditioning, laid back and uninterestedly observing the slow movement of traffic and the methodic wiping of sweat from various brows. And then there are the others, the people with no air conditioning to cushion them from the stroke-inducing heat of the afternoon. Neutral territory, I realised, was this particular bus.
When this majestic bus wheezed to a halt and those doors opened in front of you, it was like an invitation to step it up for a while: to be one of those unconcerned behind the car windows that need never be opened for fear of heat, dust, smoke and germs penetrating the cool, comfortable interior. The extreme blue everywhere you look within the bus is enough to convince you that you have left that drab, dusty world of the Karachi roads behind. Settle into a seat, enjoy the cool air. This is first class public transport, my friend. When you arrive at your destination, you calmly approach the "airlock" and press a little buzzer above your head. Brakes are immediately applied and the grand sliding doors skid open with an appropriately deflated sound. Step back down to reality, you're back in the dust.
Misha
at Wednesday, April 27, 2005
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Sunday, April 24, 2005
Fiction, ye say?
He shifts his gaze from the faded green chewing gum stuck to the underbelly of an ill-fated bench as he hears a name being called. At last, one out of the many names to emerge from the dark mouth of the loudspeaker is familiar to him. He sniffs, more out of habit than any discomfort due to the weather. As an afterthought, for good effect, he lightly rubs the tip of his nose with the back of his knuckles. Cold. The two boys sitting next to him swapping stories of oft-told conquests glance at him, suspicious. He ignores them and rises from his own warm, indented seat reluctantly. Not for the first time, he has doubts. As he walks to the see-through swinging doors, he imagines a needle penetrating his flesh, then his vein, a tiny speck of blood creeps out the sides of the puncture wound. He tries to suppress the shudder, pass it off as a tic. An old man wrapped in a dirty woolen shawl peers up at him. Once again, he deliberately ignores a curious bystander. It's important to him to believe that there are no witnesses.
As he touches the glass doors, he feels a sudden paranoia. Theycouldhavemyprintstheyhavemyprints. He forces himself to leave the barely noticable prints on the door and shuts its behind him resolutely. It takes him a scond to remember that there is no CSI in Pakistan. He finally looks up. White everywhere. Lab coats, the desks, the walls, all white. An antiseptic heaven. An Antiseptic St. Peter greets him with his name and motions to a chair, probably the only object in the room with any real richness of color. How appropriate, he thinks, and tosses himself into the chair with apathy of someone tossing keys onto a desk at the end of the day.
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The Antiseptic St. Peter held the empty syringe up to the light for a brief moment, then looked at the boy in front of him. He was repeatedly muttering something under his breath, a sure sign of dementia, according to his late father. St Peter was actually named Dr. Afzal and it was his job to sit at the front desk of this particular blood bank for ten hours a day and take blood samples from people who walked in the door. For all he knew, they could be carrying anything, from the HIV virus to Tuberculosis, and it was his job to ferret out which ones were innocently hopong to give some uninfected, pure blood to loved ones in hospitals and which ones were just troublemakers. This boy, "Ali Khan", the desi equivalent of John Smith, had the look of a troublemaker, which is why the good doctor now hesitated and looked warily at the scrawny boy.
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The mental mantras were bullshit. He sat in his brown chair and suddenly realised that the systematically soothing phrases he kept repeating to himself over and over in situations that were, to put it mildly, tense, were nothing but a mind trick. The doctor in the white lab coat paused as he held up the enpty syringe. Held it up for what? To check if it was empty enough? If there was any space, any deadly air bubbles within? The doctor (he was no St. Peter) moved closer, his head blocking out the spotless white bulb behind it and paused for a fraction of a second to squint at the patient. Impatience rose up from the base of his spine. Almost subconsciously he resumed his mental mantras. Justdoitjustdoitjustdoit. The matras stopped absuptly as the needle made contact with the skin and a slight prick followed. It was that easy, but he would never have had the guts to make the puncture himself. He knew what the prelimenaries would show, but he waited, this time with all the patience in the world.
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To those who wanted fiction: I bet you're sorry now. :) Is there any point to completing this? Please feel free to say that it's crap.
PS: Story has, in fact, petered out. Another reason to steer clear of fiction.
Misha
at Sunday, April 24, 2005
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Friday, April 22, 2005
Role Model
Traffic jams can be interesting places. People honk, motorcyclists veer and kids find something interesting to stare at. Friends are well familiar with the undeniable phenomenon that plagues me, namely that if there is a child in the restaurant I go to and he has large round eyes and a nearly bald head, vaguely resembling a melon, he/she will immediate shift their entire focus to me, causing me extreme discomfort since if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a melon with eyes staring at me. Imagine my delight, then, upon noticing in this particular traffic jam that the restaurant rule does not apply and the child in the car in front of mine is quite happy staring at other people/cars.
From seemingly thin air, or if you want to put it less dramatically, from right behind me, a large man on a small motorcycle veers in between our cars. The child up front is absolutely fascinated with this man riding a symbol of a dangerous manhood. The boy's fascination, of course, fascinates me. The man chews sloppily on what I assume to be "paan", all the while balancing the instrument of transportation on one leg, while suavely, almost fluidly, smoothing back his moustache. The boy is absolutely enchanted. This is what he wants to be when he grows up. The alpha male, the summation of the boy's vision of what a Man's Man would be like. The Man, in a practiced gesture of nonchalance, spits the beetleleaf residue on the sidewalk. The boy's eyes light up. Halfway across the world, this boy's counterpart would think in terms of John Wayne in a similar situation. This boy knows of no such man. In a flippant gesture, with the boy's eyes following his every movement like a laser beam, the Man flips his windswept collar back down and adjusts his motorcycle's position to give his leg some relief. With the careless air of a manwith infinite time on his hands, he turns and spots a female in the car adjescent. The boy shifts his gaze to discover what is worthy enough to capture his role model's attention.
Now they are both leering at me unabashedly. The torch is passed.
Misha
at Friday, April 22, 2005
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Wednesday, April 20, 2005
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - April 29th
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continuously stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?
Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The arguement goes something like this:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," say Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promply vanishes in a puff of logic.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
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What was all that about? Just some quotes from a book I enjoyed a great deal, the Hitchhikers Guide to teh Galaxy, about to be released in the form of a movie on April 29th. Enjoy!
Misha
at Wednesday, April 20, 2005
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Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Inarticulation frustration
all it takes is a little time indoors
to force me to conclude
that the sun is an illusion
just another fantasy idealized
that the real thing could never live upto
Misha
at Tuesday, April 19, 2005
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Sunday, April 17, 2005
We are family
I detest family gatherings. Inevitably, they're full of people who only speak to each other as a formality passed on to them by some ancestor who decided to tie the knot with some other person and the end result was that, in the not too distant future, you and someone else who you find about as interesting as a ball of dog hair, have to smile and talk about stupid things to fill in the silences. Being with relatives is all about filling in those space with as much (and as volumous) nothing-talk as you possibly can until the blessed release of the inevitable "bus jee, main chalti houn" moment's re-arrival.
Family reunions also remind me of wasted potential. Of childhood playmates seperated from me by virtue of gender. For all my childhood, I completely ignored my female cousins who spoke of barbies and make-up and pretty pink pencil cases and roughhoused with the male cousins. Years of Mortal Kombat, Gameboy, cricket and fart jokes later, we had truly bonded in that special way that only the young can. Fast forward to ten years later and the same cousins you laughed at and with about anything and everything are the same ones who will scurry off to an exclusive boys-only corner from where, from time to time, floats the unmistakable noise of hand slapping and manly laughter, both of which will stop as soon as you invade their space, replaced by eyes darting about awkwardly while the slight residue of the laughter caused by a not so gentlemanly joke lingers.
On a more pleasant note, tonight was the 50th wedding anniversary of my grandfather's brother. Middle aged couples applauded, younger couples braced themselves and the unmarried raised eyebrows in wonder and puzzlement. Fifty years with one person. We may all put on our bravado-masks and say that we can't imagine not being bored with the same person if you had to live with them for fifty years and joke about how five years are too many but the truth is that the fact that two people who still stand together and smile shyly at each other after all those years when they think nobody's watching deserve our applause and admiration. While exciting and seeming less and less likely statistically (I'll probably be dead/eighty, whichever comes first, before my fiftieth anniversary rolls around) the thought of getting that used to someone's being by your side for half a century sounds both appealing and scary at the same time.
Misha
at Sunday, April 17, 2005
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Sin City
Am I the only one who finds violence in movies a ridiculous thing to make a fuss over? Check out the certificate, if it's too violent for you or if you still actually had so sheltered a life that you find Kill Bill's almost cartoon-like violence disturbing, why not stick to watching "You've got mail" instead? By the way, I'm not being condescending, I actually liked "You've got mail", butu obviously for different reasons.
One such movie that I recently saw, Sin City, may have had castrations (note plural) and fights galore, but the feel of the movie is so obviously "comic book" (or, if you prefer, graphic novel-y) that I wasn't the least bit disturbed. Or is that just my own numb-to-violence opinion?
Misha
at Sunday, April 17, 2005
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Saturday, April 16, 2005
Ever been in the middle of a moment and thought "I'm going to miss this", as if it were already gone?
Misha
at Saturday, April 16, 2005
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Friday, April 15, 2005
Quagmire
How I wish I could just walk away. Be one of those people who sees someone they know engaged in a brawl and feel they can just turn and just walk off in the other direction. "It's not my battle", they mentally shrug. I am not one of those people. Regardless of what little I could have done to prevent something bad from happening, I feel guilty anyway for leaving those who can't leave like I can and are forced to face what I can easily avoid. Just open the door and walk out, a little voice whispers. It sounds like an angel of mercy. And then I almost listen to him. Almost.
This is probably not making much sense. Let's just say that a storm is a-brewin', has been brewing all my life, and one way or the other, it's going to all come to a head and resolve itself soon. And I have to be there to witness the carnage and delude myself into thinking I can stop a hurricane with my puny arms. But hell, that won't stop me from trying anyway. Here's to stupid, stupid, stupid, suicidal idiots with superhero complexes!
Misha
at Friday, April 15, 2005
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Top Ten Mishas
While on a break from doing a bunch of things that all come under the broad heading of "work", allow me to travel the meandering path to rambling that I know so well. Today's topic: the top ten most interesting uses of my name. Why? Because a friend referred me to
another misha and got the ball rolling and I'm bored. Here we go:
10.
Misha the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. Taking a bite out of idiots everywhere and referring to self as "Emperor Darth Misha I". Catchy. Bonus points for using the word "quagmire" for no real reason.
9.
Misha the Russian Mascot. This misha is a cute little bear and the mascot for the 1980 Moscow olympics. Cutesy little bugger!
8.
Misha V. Stefanuk. Best selling author, composer and pianist. With credits for the music of "One life to live" and "All my children", you'd think this one would rank higher on the list. Not so. Stefanuk loses points for being a man and for putting far too many photos of himself looking like a tortured artist for me to be able to digest on his website.
7.
The Demons of Misha Lunchbox. An arts student at the University of Illinois has created "Misha Lunchbox" and the demons within for display on his website.
6.
Misha the Wonder Cat! An adorable and sultry black feline who is adored enough by his owner to have a website dedicated to him. Points are lost, sadly, because Misha the wonder cat's owner seems to think the details of her pet's toilet training sessions are fun for others to read.
5.
Doc Misha. Hallelujah! A
female Misha at last! And a doctor to boot! Doctor Misha Ruth Cohen is a respected member of the scientific community and offers chinese medical remedies for many maladies.
4.
Misha Hub. Ever wanted an e-store named after you? I have one, bwahaha! This gains a lot of points because of their "About us": "
Thirteen years ago, Misha aimed to provide the utmost service excellence to all our clients. Today, this basic philosophy has not changed. With over 3000 products and
130 brands, we are a market leader in our class, providing all computing and office needs for our valued customers." You go, Misha Office suppliers!
3.
Misha Glouberman. The man who teaches many unuseful courses such as "How to get really good at playing Charades". A man after my own heart and a course I would gladly take.
2.
Misha Kapovich, Math teacher. This one's rated very high for proving that all Mishas do not suck at math. Just the females ones do. For some geeky fun, check out the elephant illusion at the bottom of the minimalistic website of Misha the Math Professor.
1.
Misha the pop star. In addition to being an apparently sucessful pop star, this Misha has fun links on her website such as "linky" and "koncerty", "texty" and (personal favorite) "albumy".
And that concludes this waste of a post.
Misha
at Wednesday, April 13, 2005
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Monday, April 11, 2005
Wah!
This has been an odd day. First off, the grand (unorganized) display of our Media project promos was today, along with a bunch of other projects, some as old as last year.
The viewing went well, I think, the highlight being the "Horror" movies made by the media people which is actually more of an unintentional comedy, but you need to see that to believe it. Suffice it to say, I had no part in the making or planning, unless you count mocking all the actors after seeing it as being a part of the crew. Seating could not have been more perfect however (end sarcasm) since I was dragged up to the front row, one I religiously avoid, right next to the huge speakers with the volume on too loud. It gets better. Upon glancing to my right, who would be seated next to me but the very lady who was the bane of my thursdays: *drumroll* my Calculus teacher! To make matters worse, an idiot classmate absolutely forgets about me altogether when announcing names! I shall kick his ass at a more oppurtune time for this.
Upon getting home, however, I am told that my idiot brother has somehow landed the car in a naala (very large gutter) somewhere and has recently come home smelling to the high heavens of the stuff he and a dozen other men had to wade through to literally push/lift the car out of said gutter. Suffice it to say nobody's going to be driving that car anytime soon, since the interior, right up to the dashboard, was pretty much submerged in the lovely substance found in this gutter. I find this extremely funny since my brother's pretty much confined to his bathroom to wait for hot water and probably will not get to drive again for a while. The way I figure it, you cannot make stuff like this up, so when it happens around you, you absolutely have to find the humour in it.
Misha
at Monday, April 11, 2005
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Aha!
After a great of searching, I have finally managed to find
John Mayer's Kid A cover again, albiet in Real Media format. Oddly, it seems to have almost disappeared off the Internet altogether. Definitely worth a listen to.
And of course, credit to
the host for keeping the cover up for all this time.
Misha
at Monday, April 11, 2005
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Sunday, April 10, 2005
Why?!
Why would Images subject us to this on an otherwise pleasant sunday morning?
Misha
at Sunday, April 10, 2005
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Saturday, April 09, 2005
Au Revior!
Watching my sister and several of her fellow squeal-filled 17 year old friends running around in my house asking each other they look with various clothes on brings back memories. Not of the squealing and running around in new clothes, but of my own farewell. High school to be exact, when all was sunshine and roses and we all had rose-tinted glasses permanently glued to our faces. When you finish High School, you're about as ignorant (and therefore blissful) as it is possible to be after entering your teens. You don't really know or care about how the world works, and employment, marriage, responsibility, it's all a distant dream, much like being 21. Once you actually reach it, you want to go right back to high school again.
I don't know why I'm going on about high school anyway. It's been five years. Half the girls in my class back then are married now and all the boys are working in their family businesses. A ten year reunion doesn't seem quite that far away now, as it did that one time on our farewell after all the guests had gone and we were alone in our old classroom once again, quiet and darkness all around and talking about how we would miss this wonderfully horrible dump we called home for the past God knows how many years. Back then, reunions were too far in the future to think about but now they seem almost within reach. Almost.
Disclaimer: No, this post has no point. Yes, incoherence and badly articulated thoughts are the law in this blog. If you want good writing, you'll find plenty of it in the bottom of the sidebar to your right.
Misha
at Saturday, April 09, 2005
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Thursday, April 07, 2005
Spider
And yes, big news, at least for me (this warrants a new post) : am finally published, in
Spider no less and this time with my own name! :)
Edit: Scanned pictures:
Page 1 and
Page 2.
Misha
at Thursday, April 07, 2005
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The round-up.
First of all, what is up with all this dust?! I feel like we're living in the Sahara with all this dust getting in absolutely everywhere from shoes to hair to my cat. I shall commence a rain dance to make it rain just a bit (not too much because then it's a major pain to get anywhere with all the water collected on roads), enough to make the dust settle down and behave itself.
Additionally, the worst part of doing something media-related is having other people watch and dissect it. SZABIST has, so far, not subjected us to this as yet and we thought, with only a few weeks to go till graduation, we'd gotten away unscathed. Surprise! Promotional trailers for our documentary efforts will be shown in an extravaganza to promote our newly established Media Club. Most will probably avoid attending and watching the airing of their efforts, but I shall be hiding in the back somewhere. How can you miss something you created being shown and reactions being provided?
The interesting but shush-shush news is that over the summer I shall sign up for a photography course being offered by the same media club since I enjoy photography and always need credits. The good news for you, faithful readers, is that you will not have to endure my sad attempts to capture odd things in photographs for very long and hopefully, by the end of the summer, there should be a significant improvement since there's no place to go but up here. Someday, I shall be as good as
this guy. :)
Misha
at Thursday, April 07, 2005
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Shine On!
How is it, I wonder, that one so young can remained troubled when in the company of the stars. They watch quietly from their infinitely far reaches of space, like a panel of wise old men watching a baby trying to walk, holding themselves back to allow him to do it all by himself. They have seen planets explode, other stars collapse onto themselves, black holes being formed and sucking in bits of everything, like God's vacuum cleaner. Compared to that, all my problems are worthy to be laughed at, and laugh I did, as the twelve year old does when he watches his parents and other grown ups talking about strikes and political problems while all he has to worry about is getting a new geometry box and finishing reading about tenses in his grammar book. How can you not giggle when a realization like that hits you?
And all it took for these thoughts was a twenty minute gap in the electricity supply. So God bless all of us crazy Pakistanis, even the KESC people!
Misha
at Tuesday, April 05, 2005
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Bhai
Being the practical one, it is always my little brother who manages to help me get out of a depressed funk, albiet often unwittingly as he tries to iron a T-shirt whilst singing what he very mistakenly considers a passably good imitation of Noor Jehan. It just goes to show that siblings, however different they may be from you, are in the end, one of the major but silent things that keep you going. My brother may be taller than me, posessor of the hairiest skinny legs on the planet, pathetically out of tune and very likely to poke someone's eye out while he's talking with his hands, but I love him just the same.
I just hope he never discovers what a blog is and where mine is or this uncharacteristically mushy moment could come back to haunt me.
Misha
at Tuesday, April 05, 2005
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Requiem
One of the single most disturbing/haunting/grim/heartbreaking movies I've ever seen. Unlike any other movie I've seen to date, I could not bring myself to go to sleep the first time I saw it. If you like happy movies, best to avoid it altogether.
Misha
at Tuesday, April 05, 2005
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Monday, April 04, 2005
The Update
Is it just me or has Blogger gone insane? If moving blogs wasn't such a hassle, I would have probably switched over to another host ages ago.
These last four days, though, have been murder. The final semesters of a lot of people are coming to an end. A generation, my generation, of CS students is passing by and soon they'll all be off into the big, bad world. This last bit is a source of much anxiety amongst the would be "Fresh Graduates". That's a buzzword with all the job hunts going on: "Fresh graduates". People are running around like chickens with their heads cuts off, worrying about their projects, their finals exams, their employment issues, and I can't really blame them. Heck, I'd much rather sit back and watch amusedly because this is a scenario that's a good long way off from right now for me.
Returning to happier things, employment has been good to me. Having the chances of a steady income for at least a few months is making me think big and dream bigger. Of course, everyone has that list of things you want to buy if you became a kajillionaire, but keeping in mind that it's my first job, I've had to set aside several of the top items on my list, such as #1: Monster truck with wheels as tall as an apartment, but that's okay, because I have other plans. Should employment work out and I get to save enough for a couple of months, I should have my hands on the new
Special Edition U2 iPod. I have learnt from experience not to plan too far ahead, but who knows, it just may come true.
As for studies, I have accustomed myself to the fact that if you're always on time, always do the work on time, always stick to an organized, timely manner of doing something, you'll be taken for granted. If you do well, it's to be expected. You will never, however, be lauded as much as that single student who was not working at all initially and suddenly showed a spark of drive and did some work. Which brings me to my point. My view that Pakistan is not for the orderly, polite, shareef, punctual people at all, but for the bullies. The meek should all migrate and then come back when the bullies have wiped each other out.
The past few days have been all about work, which prompts me, in my sleep-deprived state, to sit here singing the "Kaam kaam kaam, din raat karain hum kaam" jingle as I go about the pressing business at hand.
Misha
at Monday, April 04, 2005
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Friday, April 01, 2005
Glee!
(Click on image for full-sized version)
My new gadget... in about a week. Isn't it beautiful? :D
For those interested, Specs:
Display: TFT, 65K colors. 176 x 220 pixels resolution.
Ringtones: Type Polyphonic (16 channels), MP3.
Memory: 32 MB ROM, 16 MB RAM, 120 MHz processor.
OS: Microsoft Windows Smartphone OS
Features: GPRS (Class 8) and Infrared.
Misc: HTML browser, Full PIM functionality, Calendar, Tasks, Memos, World Clock, T9, USB port, MP3 player, Built-in handsfree.
PS: I hate Blogger for making me type this out three times.
Misha
at Friday, April 01, 2005
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