Baithak

I was dieing to write this post but unfortunately my home phone line was facing issues and it got fixed just today. But thats another story and I doubt that I’ll share it with you guys, but it does involve some hilarious bits where my mother challenged the phone guys to compete with Mustafa Kamal (city mayer and world’s second best mayer according to some magazine) and they actually took it really seriously. By the way I enjoyed making that update on twitter, it was kind of good to do that quickly from office. I am getting to like this micro blog thing.

Well I drifted from the main topic, and thats the picnic @ Mubarak Village. So realizing that my holidays were coming to an end and the only place I had visited was Karachi Zoo, so I thought to finally contact my brother in law. And the best way to find him is to bend and search him under his FWD. In my most melancholy way I told him that I am about to go mad and he really need to come up with a picnic plan. He was sweet enough to console me and ask for a day so that he can plan something out. With different plans failing due to one issue or another, he finally suggested to visit Mubarak Village.

Mubarak Village is outside Karachi, probably somewhere in Baluchistan. It was a 1.5 - 2 hours long journey and its end parts were quite dangerous, one mistake and you are straight into the sea. You can’t cover the last 15 minute journey unless you have an FWD and an expert driver. Our party stopped just in front of the Charna point and it was like one of the most beautiful places I ever saw. The best thing was the clear blue water - that was a major change after seeing Clifton’s black water for like ages.

So without going into details, I’ll just say that I had a wonderful time with my family and spent most of my time sitting on the beach with a hot cup of tea and that was a good combination with cold water touching my feets. We did bar-b-q too and that was yummy. Our trip just made me recall that world outside my computer is so shiny, bright and beautiful. I am gonna remember this trip for a very long time and am really thankful to my B-i-l who took out time from his busy schedule and made this all possible.

Mubarak Village is highly recommended.

Here are some photos for your eyes only

The local kids,

Charna Point,

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By Baithak.Net

Note : You can check the first part here.

So I left for my sibling’s home, with making plans of having an elephant ride. But it was extremely important that nobody should know that I want to sit on the elephant - I mean it will sound a little stupid. So I wanted to have the ride without letting anyone know that I want to have one. Well, I am smart enough to do all that acting and my siblings…ohh God, they are too naive in comparison to me.

I reached their home, had my lunch. While we were getting ready for the trip, I heard the mistress making a statement to her hubby that she can’t do something as she is already going out and need to take care of three kids. I protested that there are two kids and an astonishingly intelligent software engineer, an skeptic ‘Yes’ welcomed me :S. So, we started our journey with the mistress continuously prating about how the three kids are driving her mad. Well, there are somethings in life about which you can’t do anything and having an elder sibling is just one of them. Now it was all the more difficult to talk about ‘the’ ride, I was not a kid after all :(.

The whole city was plastered with congratulation messages for the city Nazim and at some places, QTAHBS (Quaid-e-tehrik Altaf Hussain bhai sahab, yeah thats one person) was showering his love on the nazim by hugging him. Altaf bhai seemed like a good start for the ride discussion.

Me (while looking at the picture of ‘the’ hug) : For some reason this picture reminds me of elephants and rhinos, I wonder if they have put it on the Zoo gate for some kind of specific advertising reason.

silence…(okay that was a very stupid joke)

Me : Hey that reminds me that they have this elephant by the name of Anar-kalie, I think our kids should have a ride on her, they’ll love it.

silence…

Me : But they are too small, maybe I should sit with them in order to take care of them. You know elephant rides can become dangerous, so an elder should always be there to take care of minors. Not that I want to sit, I am just worried about the kids.

Sibling : Okay, so why don’t you just say that you want to sit on the elephant.

(See sometimes your family know you too well…Gawd :S)

Me : No…no…not at all….I am just talking with regards to the kids. That elephant must be fun for them.

Sibling : No idea about her being funny but she is definitely dead for quite some months now. And they have no replacement for her.

Me : WHAT ??? SHE IS DEAD ??? You mean she is dead kind of dead ???

Sibling : I don’t know about any other kind

Me : I mean, why me, God why me ??I mean elephant ride was the only reason I was coming for, how can she die? Why didn’t you tell me?

Sibling : mmm…probably because just seconds ago you were denying that she is the main reason you were coming for. But you should be glad that she wasn’t the only reason you were living for.

My sibling laughed on her own stupid joke and we finally reached the zoo. With no elephant to look forward to, I dragged myself, everything has started to look so bleak.

So the first cage was of deers, mmm okay they are good innocent creatures. And the next cage is of…mmm… more deers - okay thats charming. And the next cage is of even more deers -and the next one has…OMG… alot more deers. Okay do they have anything apart from deers and more deers? yeah, they do! ‘more and more and more deers.’ After walking for like centuries, we finally reached one cage with a sign saying ‘Black Deers,’ that really did seem like a positive change. But the black deers were actually ‘black and white deers,’ never mind.

Then we saw parrots, I remind my sibling that we could have seen all these sleepy birds at my own house and actually our mother’s parrots happen to be alot more clever (read fighter), for the first time in my life, I really felt proud of my enemies.

Then you know what I saw, I saw a roaster, can you believe that ? It was an honor to see one, and if I hadn’t visited the Zoo, there was just no chance that I could see a roaster in my whole life. I mean its not that we have it in every other house. And I am seriously serious.

Some cages had like 3-4 lazy monkeys, in some we saw a few dreamy kangaroos, a sleepy lion and then some proud ducks and that truly sums up our visit. The only highlight for me is when the ‘Kissing Fish’ actually did kiss my hand which was placed on her aquarium, my sibling insisted that she was trying to bite but I preferred to thought that she did like my hand (talk about being narcissist.)

Some people were advertising for a roaster who happened to have four legs, I don’t know why we didn’t went for that, that actually might have given some meaning to the trip, but if you go then do check and update us.

My analysis was that 60% of the cages had deers, my sibling didn’t agree, I updated my analysis and mentioned that if we ignore empty cages then 60% of the cages had deers. We all agreed and concluded that we have seen too many deers for the day and can’t have any more of them. It was time to go home.

So, if you have nothing in life to do, if you just want to recall that why exactly you should not visit Karachi Zoo for another like 10 years, then just go and give it a visit. If you have better things at hand like a Pushto movie then sit at home and watch it.

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So, I was hearing this song,

Jaane kyun, dil jantha hai
Tu hai toh, I’ll be alright

and then suddenly I thought that if I would have to dedicate this line to anyone then who it will be ? I’ll give this answer in some next post but I’ll ask you to just stop there for one second and think the same, you might be in for a surprise And well you can always share it with us. But please remember that mom and dad are definitely not an option.

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So it seems like everybody liked the last comic strip quite alot, if not everybody then at least the four people who happened to tell me, thats another thing that one of them was yours truly herself. So that will just motivate me to come up with more strips, Usually I don’t get this kind of response to my normal too wordy and too lengthy posts, and being somebody who wants to be a published writer, its such a shame, so I’ll keep working on that front too.

I know I wasn’t able to update my blog regularly but as Faiz Ahmed Faiz said “Tujh say bhi dil faraib hain ghum rozgar kay.” But I guess you already know that. In case you are wondering, my project deployment went decently well .

I managed to watch the movie ‘Fashion,’ nothing too terrific, but not unbearable. And if there is one movie that I am planning to watch then thats ‘Dark Knight,’ I mean I need to see that why exactly everyone is loving the movie so much ???? And apparently people liked the joker much more than the batman!!!

And lastly, I am about to have a whole one week holiday!!!! there is a small story behind it, which I’ll tell you soon. So hopefully, you’ll see quite some updates in the next week thats if I got some time from shopping, shopping and more shopping.

Good night for now.

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If you’ll ask me that whats my secret desire then I’ll say that ‘yeah, I’ll answer that on my blog :P’ but if you ask me about my not-so-secret desire then without taking a second, my answer will be ‘to have my very own pet dog’. My mother has this religious issue with them, and well for some reason she prefer parrots, and well moms are all powerful and can easily threaten to throw you out of her house in case you won’t follow the rules set by her. I day dreamed about situations like going for a stroll at around 11 p.m. and in case any dog (in human form) tried to say one thing, my dog - my body guard will take care of that . But no lunch boycott, no big fat tears, no cute puppy could ever made my mother agree with me.

One good Sunday, I received a call from one of our close relatives. It was a couple without kids and their all other family members were out of country. With the air of Santa clause opening the biggest gift, the wife told me that they are planning to buy a dog. And apparently, they spent all their day on net searching for the right puppy. The husband likes to plan everything and while planning to adopt a dog, they were concerned that what will happen if they’ll have to go out of the country, and they think that they will be comfortable to leave the dog under our guardianship but wonders if we are okay with that ? I mean what do you think what my answer could be, I was one dog-less person and it was like Eid had come earlier. Without giving one second’s thought I declared that the dog should always come to our house and definitely not to any of hubby’s relatives - no way, we will also make sure to visit him regularly so that he can recognize us and that they should also tell us that exactly when they’ll be going for the dog shopping and why is it that they don’t have any foreign visit in next one month :S If you are wondering that why I didn’t check it with my mom then lets just say that mom was nowhere near Karachi - it was truly a script written by God to fulfill my desires.

After a couple of days, I received a call in office informing that the dog is here! As soon as I reached home, I along with one of my siblings left to meet the new family member. I drove the car as fast as I could and finally reached the destination. The mistress of the house opened the door and there we saw that little black creature and I said to my sibling, ‘isn’t he the cutest.’ With no mom to hold us off, we played with him alot. He was a German shepherd about 3 months old. They had bought him for 5000 PKR but I personally felt that a dog is priceless.

I wanted to name him Peter Parker but he was already named as neo (Matrix’s hero’s name,) :s.
We ran around the house and he followed us , all the time trying to get into the inner area of the house, licking our feets which was alright, but also trying to lick our faces which was definitely not alright. Near midnight, the couple threw us out of their house. On our journey back home, we discussed his every move excitedly and declared that we will visit him on every weekend and wondered that when exactly the couple will go out of Pakistan - I mean whats the matter with these guys, why are they always in Pakistan :S But nevertheless we were happy, finally, we had a dog in the family!

We reached home and a call from our mom was waiting for us - seriously moms have a gift, somehow they always know if the kids are following the rules or not.

Mom : where were you guys at this time of night? How many times do I have to……

…

after 10 minutes of mom’s monologue about how girls are suppose to behave

Sibling : Amma, we were at XYZ’s place, just to drink tea and we told them that we should leave early but they were just not allowing us…
Me : ohh yeah, I don’t know what was wrong with these guys, we actually had to throw them off in order to come out of their house. They are so mad, you know they have bought a dog., can you believe Amma

Mom : Okay, so you went there to see the dog
Sibling : No, we did not
Me : not at all, we saw the thing only once we were there. And I tell you Amma, you were right, he wasn’t that good, I think there was an evil aura around him.

Mom : did you guys touched him ? do you know that angels stop coming….
…
after another 10 minutes monologue of mom…

Sibling : No Amma, we saw him from very far away.
Me : How can we even do that…no way. I think I have already build a dog allergy, seriously.

After this conversation, we decided to not to inform our mother about our agreement of taking care of dog in the absence of actual owners, this seemed like too much of a news for her nerves. She can scowl on that whenever she’ll be in Karachi.

But sadly, we never had to break the news to her, as neo died within a week . The person who sold him actually lied about his age, he was 6 weeks old and not 12 weeks which meant that he couldn’t get enough of his mother’s milk and thus his immunization system was weak. Hearing the news was quite sad, we cursed the seller and recalled the few happy hours which we spent with him.

After 2-3 months , I was in office and again I received a call from home saying that the same couple has an special news and I should come immediately. Now, there were two possibilities, either they had bought another dog (Yay!) or they were expecting, thinking about this, I took early leave and reached their home. It was neither of the two things. Apparently this time, they had adopted a kid, a real human being. We knew that they were trying for kids but this was so out of blue that I couldn’t even give a correct immediate reaction. It took me five minutes to overcome the shock and congratulate the new mom and dad - trust me , I took much less time than my mom. The baby was deep in sleep without realizing that he already had one of the major turning points of his life.

The kid was abandoned by his family immediately after his birth and the couple got him within an hour of his birth. In the middle of a hard cold winter season, hospital gave him away in a very thin small piece of cloth. Everyone was discussing one thing or other, some were curious about his parentage, some others were concerned that its too cold for him, a few were fighting over the name and sitting there, holding the baby, I thought that we have this baby, who will soon be a person with his own thoughts, ideas and theories, he will soon be laughing and talking, will go to school, will fall in love and will hopefully have a graduation and wedding day and eventually kids of his own, he may go on to do something major in the history and still, somebody actually threw him away and we got him for FREE. I mean even for neo the dog, we had to spend 5000 PKR.

Isn’t this a weird, weird, weird world.

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So, this strip is inspired from my own life (excluding offcourse the noble prize part). Today, I had some time, so I decided to work on it. I still don’t know that how should I place these text bubbles, had a very tough time in writing all that text and its placement. But well, you can check the comic strip here,

http://www.bitstrips.com/user/27778/read.php?comic_id=134057&sc=1

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Okay, so theres one more on the hug topic. But I promise that this is the last one on this topic.

Original Link : http://www.bitstrips.com/user/27778/read.php?comic_id=121241&sc=1

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This post is just to tell you all that I am alive, not sure about the kicking part , though I am so gonna kick a few things out of my life, but thats another thing and you will get all the inside information about how I got rid of them but right now, we will have to wait and see.

But oh boy, what a busy month Ramzan was, 14 hours long fasting and I managed to miss all the sehries - can you believe it? Unfortunately, Ramzan also brought some unexpected visits to hospitals (that was worth 3 posts but I never got the time .) But I somehow really like the Ramazan routine, I mean if you are home at 4:30 then what else can you ask for in life but I did had my share of breaking roza on the road or in office. Iftari on the road is a yummy affair , atleast in Pakistan, you get to eat alot of things and all for free! By the way, its too late but still, Eid Mubarak!

As usual, some incidents did happened, but looking at my schedule, I need to choose one topic to write about. I leave it to you. You have the following three choices, now which one do you want me to write about,

1. Midnight visit to hospital - The story is all about how one innocent software engineer interacted with so many doctors and shrewd nurses. How she understood all their blah blah and how she managed to come with extremely intelligent questions like ‘laal golie yaah neelie golie,’ and thats after 16 years of hard study.

2. Murder Mystery - One fine morning, I got up and decided to drive to office. I went to my car, pulled off the cover and there I saw, blood mixed with water. An unacceptably strong smell welcome me and then….This is a story about a dead body and how I got rid of it.

3. No, please don’t share your stupid stories - Its already a shame that people like you can write anything on internet and now we have to bear with all your crap. So, NO NO NO…. NOTHING
Choice is up to you now I’ll be honest, I swear.

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This post is in loving memory of a dear someone. Today, many years ago, he decided to leave us forever. These few lines are just to appreciate the fact that how much we miss him and how much we will continue to miss him.

Loosing someone is a sad business but the worst part of it is the long lasting impacts it has on ones life. Its not as simple as hearing the news, calling relatives, having a funeral and then coming back home and reciting Holy Quran for the next many days. You get the news, you drag yourself through initial days but then you realize that there is no way of filling up that vacant space. All other sorrows can be replaced with something good but this has no replacement, its like a knee injury - once you have it, it will always remain there and will give you pain at the most unexpected of times.

The first and the hardest part comes when you start using past tense for them, ‘he use to be home by 7,’ ‘he never liked rice…’ with braced teeths, you cross this.

In initial days, you expect him to come any time, every sound make you think that he is nearby, but every time you face a hard cold disappointment recalling that its not possible and then the cruel cycle of time make you remember that no one will be pressing the house bell at 6 P.M. and if its pressed then its certainly not him. You realize it, remember it but don’t like it.

Winters come and go and no one bring that ‘Gajjar ka halwa’ on the way back home and if somebody try to imitate him, you find out that its just not the same because the best thing about that ‘Gajjar ka halwa’ was that, ‘he’ use to bring it.

Few more days go and then you realize that how he has started to vanish from your life, you can’t see him in any photographs, all your new family albums are without him.

You try to lift yourself up by thinking that at least you have memories of good times but its still not enough. He is not around to laugh on your jokes, not to hear the story of how well your speech went, not to see your mark sheet or to hear the news of your promotion, and he definitely can’t meet your kids and another realization dawns on you , ‘memories are just not enough.’

Many graduations, weddings, birthdays come and go, and he is still not around. You celebrate with others but in all the noise, somewhere deep down you try to think that ‘only if he would have been here then I wonder how he must have reacted.’

On every turn of your life, you are left with endless questions of ‘Only if he would have been here….’ Would I still be a doctor, ‘ Would I still be doing this job,’ Would I still be marrying this person,’ would I still be what I am today. And off course, you will never get the answers.

One day, you learn to live without them but its alot more different from living with them. So, if loved ones surround you then appreciate this fact and make the most of it because when they go, they just go. No memory can replace the real them.

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If I recall 12th May, 18th October 2007, 27th December 2007 - the only thing that comes back to me is that how frantically we were calling other family members, praying that they are safe, praying that they weren’t ‘there’ by any chance, praying that we reach home safely.
You are having just another normal day, writing documents for clients, picking that cake for a birthday party, planning to call an old friend, thinking to take family out for a dinner and suddenly life takes a back seat, and fear and uncertainty takes hold of you. Still, you somehow gather yourself and try to have a normal life. But maybe there is an end to everything.
One has to die one day, whether you die with a disease, or in a road accident, or a blast - in the end, we all have to go. If I had died yesterday in that blast, there is nothing I could do. But what if it was one of my loved ones, somebody I cared about, somebody I looked forward to see every day , somebody who use to be the the nucleus of my life, how would I have survived after him? And those who died yesterday, must be important to somebody in this world, what those survivors will be going through…God knows.
Yesterday, watching Marriott’s destruction and those blood stained bodies, a tiredness fell upon me, which had nothing to do with my busy schedule. A tiredness which could probably be cured only by going back to my creator. Its like that inner voice which tells you that this is the way and you somehow know that this is right. I want to go to Him and just have a peaceful, fearless sleep. I just want to tell Him that I can’t bear it anymore, so much of pain - no, I can’t. May he give us all peace.
I pray that you, your family and everyone remain safe.

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By Baithak.Net

Part of maturing as a programming professional is developing an uncompromising sense of intellectual honesty. Intellectual honesty commonly manifests itself in several ways:

• Refusing to pretend you’re an expert when you’re not
• Readily admitting your mistakes
• Trying to understand a compiler warning rather than suppressing the message
• Clearly understanding your program—not compiling it to see if it works
• Providing realistic status reports
• Providing realistic schedule estimates and holding your ground when management asks you to adjust them

An Excerpt from ‘Code Complete.’ Every point is 100% true and realistic, I mean Steve McConnell really knows what he is talking about.

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Yesterday, I read a news piece in DAWN about burying 5 women alive. That’s sad but realistically speaking that’s nothing new, we hear about it all the time. Even before I give you the details, I am sure that you can guess the reason behind such a horrific act and also that who can do this. Yes, that’s right, poor women wanted to marry of their own will. But unfortunately they happened to live in a remote area of Pakistan having a tribal system

Just like any other normal human being, I do feel the pain of it. But the thing that really left we stumped was that a senator actually justified this act by labelling it as a ‘tribal custom.’

Balochistan Senator SardarIsrarullahZehri stunned the upper house on Friday when he defended the recent incident of burying alive three teenage girls and two women in his province, saying it was part of “our tribal custom.”

I doubt if he stunned the upper house, he might have stunned a few people there but the whole of the upper house ? - no way! they must be thinking in their hearts, ‘oh at least somebody finally voiced it, that really is our custom.’ I want to ask them that you are burying people here just because they wished to marry someone while in the rest of the world our very own desis are having live-in goras, I mean in which world are you living?

I want to register that this man does NOT represent me , nor does he represent any other logical Pakistani. And now we can understand that why the plights of many Pakistani women will never be taken care of, if our senators are of this quality then there is nothing we can hope about.

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