Just filling up an empty space

Its been more than a week that I wrote anything. Seems like I am suffering from a blogging blackout – again!

Well, things are not great now a days on my end. Though its not the work that is bothering me (my past week or so has been very ‘normal’ as far as work is concerned). Perhaps its the heat that has started to boil my brain now… grrrrr

The place where I live is being painted now a days, everything is being scattered, the smell of paint and total chaos of household stuff is another factor that is screwing up my mind. This situation is likely to continue for the next week or so. Damn, I just don’t fucking want to enter into this place after a full day’s work but i seem to have no other choice.

And my bro is off to Dubai again, this time for a whole month. I am sure he will be met with a new colored house when he gets back.

Ok, me off now. Gotta take a shower and then to watch a movie. Which one should I watch from a list: ‘Sunshine Cleaning’, ‘Pink Panther 2’, ‘Night at the museum 2’, ‘April showers’????

ahhh decisions, decisions.

 

Hope to write again with a more positive head.

GLORY: Its Ours

YESSSSSS!

THEY DID IT!

 

PAKISTAN WON THE T20 CRICKET WORLD CUP

 

 

The Fireworks have already started, cars with loud music are circling the neighborhood (and the whole city country too)… Aerial shots being fired, people blowing whistles.

Its gonna be a party tonight…. this team deserved it, this country needed one moment to feel happy….

I JUST LOVE IT, I NEED TO GO OUT AND LIGHT A CIGERATTE OF JOY!

 

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…. AFRIDI ROCKS – THE BOYS IN GREEN RULE!

T20 Final – Hopes and Emotions

Today is the final of the Cricket T20 world cup.

And to our utmost surprise, the local cricket stars as one of the contesting teams. (Pakistan v Sri lanka)

Suddenly, we see that the newspapers are filled with words like ‘hope’, ‘heroes’, ‘stars’, ‘prayers’ blah blah…. Politicians,  ex cricketers, wannabe celebrities are all conveying their message of goodwill to the cricket team. But, is it just about these famous people that are hoping for the best? – NO! It NEVER was about these famous people. Its all about the common people who follow cricket with more enthusiasm than they follow religion. They have waited patiently all those years to see their team reach the finals of any high level world event, and their hopes with their team are high.

The more matches this team has won in this tournament, the more focused the fans have gone, Initially everyone (yours truly included) believed, that this team would barely reach the second round, and losing against England in the first match proved their concerns, but our team has crawled its way to the top two and the crowd has cheered with them.

My MSN contacts have also been expressing similar emotions for the past two days or so. Some call it the reincarnation of 1992 world cup, some call it a miracle, some are just plain ‘shocked’….

Our Media has jumped into the party as well. TV channels playing motivational songs, Radio/TV stations earning money by playing SMS messages on the screens sent by fans. Newspapers publishing an extra half page of ‘analysis’ of teams.

And I can’t help but smile on the statement by the KESC that ‘THERE WILL BE NO POWER FAILURE’ during the course of the game… lolz

So, the environment is set for the clash tonight…. From Karachi to Frontier, people will be glued to every piece of live coverage they have available… and they have all the right to be hopeful, coz for the past years this nation has seen nothing but misery and they now know the importance of smiles (no matter how small the happiness may be). It is also a responsibility of the cricket team not to let the fans down.

Go Team, Win this for us. We are anxious!

 

LiveJournal Tags: T20,Pakistan,Cricket,Srilanka,Fans,Media,Hopes,Expectations,Emotions

The Way Girls are – Funny Short Film

Just finished watching this funny video clip….

Very interesting… and funny!

original url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFqIJ34wpIg

Good work, who ever made this thing 🙂

Presenting the idea of The ‘Dot’ Day.

Inspired by the word ‘Dot Ball’.
Understanding the concept of dot ball is needed to grasp the idea of dot day.

In cricket lingo, The ‘Dot’ ball refers to the ball on which run is scored and no wicket falls. It is just a delivery by a bowler which is either missed by the batsman or is played defensively.

Dot balls are important in cricket for the bowling side, as it helps control the onslaught of the batting side. Since the cricket game is evolving into shorter and shorter forms of the game, the need of good bowling squad is important to keep the runs average down.
Coming back to the idea of dot-day….  With this T20 of Terrorism being played successfully in the country with the terrorists playing an ‘explosive’ innings (literally), the bowling side (government) badly needs to control the line-and-length of what it delivers. Hence, the idea of dot-day is born.
A dot-day, in my definition is a day when there is no terror attack in any part of the country. No suicide blasts, No target killings, No be-headings…. Nothing at all! .If you ask any cricket lover how can a bowling side successfully deliver dot-balls? The probable answers would be: ‘Control your bowling length’, ‘Take successive wickets’, ‘Drop the ball in the block-hole’, ‘Let them play on the back foot’ etc. Ok, there are rare cases when an aggressive stance by the batting side leads to a dot ball but that is either due to very good control over the fielding, or by errors in executing the shot by the batsman. We can apply the similar practices on the bowlers (law enforcement agencies) and fielders (the support staff). The bowlers need to be aggressive and to know where to deliver. Relying on the ‘I shot an arrow into the air, where it lands I do not care’ approach will only increase the number of hits that that they will get. Similarly, the fielders must also know what the batsman likes to play, what is his Achilles heel and with the current bowling strategy, where can they expect the hits. 
Another important factor to motivate the bowlers is the crowd behavior. The crowd includes You, Me and the rest of the country. When you belong to the bowling side, its important to express your full support so that they can deliver accordingly. Booing and yelling over any loose delivery further discourages the bowler.
I know this is too much to ask for, but in order to tight the reigns over the out of control scoring rate, our bowlers must know where to drop their deliveries.  But the most important role is yet un-explained. And it’s the captain I am talking about. The stronger the control of the captain, the better thinker he is, the greater the chance of dot balls (read: dot-days). If the captain is accidentally selected (which unfortunately is the case currently), the selectors must rethink over their selection criteria.

So, if you are a bowling side:

Good Bowlers + Athletic Fielders + Intelligent Captain + Crowd Support = Sure Win

Now, ask yourself: “What do we lack in this equation?”

LiveJournal Tags: Cricket,Dot Ball,Dot Day,Burhan,Terrorism,Pakistan,Winning Equation,Loser Captain,T20 of Terrorism

Funeral of War Heroes: Anybody Motivated?

Now, as the military operation in Swat is maturing, the
number of casualties from the military side is rising. As of today, they claim
that 109 soldiers have been martyred. Every now and then TV channels are
broadcasting the funeral of some soldier (mostly officers) and we see similar
scenes – A bunch of sobbing relatives, accompanying fellow soldiers in starched
uniforms, trumpets blowing, the floral wreaths as a show off. I keep on
thinking about the impact of such televised events on the people who watch it –
especially the kids who think “wars are fun” (yeah, fun only when you are doing
this war thingy in a video game).

Would watching a soldier’s burial in full military honor be a
motivating factor for the general public? What goes on in the mind of a common viewer, when he sits in front of the TV and pays his tribute to a martyr who died
in the line of duty?

Perhaps the first effect of watching a soldier’s funeral is realizing
the value of ‘Freedom’. The importance of keeping it, and the costs associated
when you just let fanatics to hijack it. There certainly is no greater
sacrifice than one’s life so that the people they serve may feel that freedom
has come back to their doorsteps.

Another thing that one can’t forget to mention is that
martyrs in every society are considered holier than any other thing. Not only
does a fallen soldier attains respect, but compels others to be like him. How
many a times, have the younger brothers of a fallen soldiers vowed to follow
the footsteps of his elder sibling, how many a times does a sobbing mother wants
her other sons to be like her shaheed son?

But another set of questions one must ask himself is, “For
how long will it continue?”, and “What effect will it have on the same people
who keenly watch a military funeral?”

The answer to first question is a bit complicated. Once you
start it, you HAVE to finish it… deserting your objectives in the middle means
that you have to start all over again (if and only if you can ever start). As
far as the second one is concerned, my opinion would be that prolonged
casualties would make the people numb towards the casualties (yeah unless its
someone close to you who gets a bullet in the neck). How long would one take
interest if all you see every day is a soldier’s funeral?

And finally, our media portrays these people as nation’s
“Heroes”. I fully back this statement. But what I disagree on is that when they
run a slideshow of pictures of our ‘heroes’, they are all officers. Never have
I seen a normal “jawan” in that slideshow. Why is it so? It’s the jawans who
have taken the real toll and their life is worth equally as much as the life of
a captain. It’s the junior crew who needs more support and we seem to have
turned our backs towards them (atleast that’s what I get from watching the TV
channels, I wish I am wrong).

Ah, I wish this operation to come to an end (after meeting
its objectives, of course) and that we learn a lesson that never to let some
fucking loser take control of our destiny that it takes thousands of lives to
get it back.

Long live Pak Army!

With Hammy after two years!

12:40 AM:   Entering the bathroom, I hastily stripped myself off my clothes and turned on the shower. Unexpectedly, the water was relatively colder and I let it hit me with full force. I dug my head down and watched as the water flowed down my body and flowed towards the drain. I could spot the remnants of fine grains of gray sand…. and with them flowed the sticky sweat that had accompanied my body for the most of the evening.
Ah, the heat of Karachi. Its so humid and so disgusting. And when you travel on the smoke filled roads, you can always expect such a mess. But apart from a full evening on the roads, I also happened to stay on the beach for a good two hours… and that made me look like a total coal-miner.

With those thoughts, I recalled the events of the evening….

That had been the day that I had eagerly waited for almost a month. My best old time friend Hammy was visiting the town and what kind of ‘langotya yaar’ would I be if I had not gone to visit him???, So I begged him to spare a few hours and he graciously agreed (though he continuously kept reminding me of the dinner offer with a bunch of chicks which he turned down to go out with me).

I left office and got to his place around 6:30. Then we pondered over where to go. Since he being the visitor to the city by the sea, he suggested to go to sea and spend some time there and to catch up on things. So, we caught a bus to Regent Plaza, and then got on a rickshaw to reach the sea-view. The time was just right. The sun was streaking low, the sea breeze flowing strong and the crowd in good numbers. We found a wooden bench and started to catch up on things. The central point of discussion was on career movies and the concerns of our respective elders about seeing their son facing the tough world without the company of a partner… lolz.
The sun was setting, I wanted to watch the awesome sight of the orange orb drowning into sun again, but the view was obstructed by the clouds… damn clouds!

When the darkness spread, we decided to get up, took a walk around the beach and went to a nearby cafe to get some tea. Then found a rickshaw to Boat basin to get some dinner. In the dinner we ordered Makhani Handi from Tandoori Hut accompanied by Roghni Naan. Then to digest this huge huge meal, we gulped down kahwa (whose effectiveness I still doubt). It was already well past 11 PM so, we thought about getting back to our respective homes. And guess what? No rickshaw would ever take us to our places without charging loads of money…. in this moment of despair, a van came to us and the driver offered us a ride to a more manageable place for twenty rupees per person only…. We had no choice but to accept the offer.

The driver, was one crazy guy! He drove that Suzuki van like a goddamn F1 car. turning wildly, braking and yelling at its best… but dropped us off to the designated place in less than 15 minutes… phew that was close.

The rest of the journey was uneventful. I dropped Hammy back to his place, I changed bus and got to mine…. and as soon as I reached home, I wanted to just get out of those stinky clothes and wash myself (this is where the post started from)

So, Hammy baby! If you ever read this… Thanks for the wonderful time… just like the old days. This has been the most exciting of our get-together for almost 10 years (since we moved to lands far away in order to pursue our desired lives) I wish we could meet much often, but doesn’t seem likely that we are going to meet again for quite some time now.

Thanks again, buddy!  Live long and prosper.

 

LiveJournal Tags: Hammy, Burhan A. Farooqi, Sea View, Karachi, Beach, Get Together, Old Friend, Tandoori Hut, Makhni Handi, Roghni Naan, Boat Basin