she

She wakes up, wondering what it’s all for. Again.

She’s lost and her mind, her feet now wander as freely as her mind always did.

She will hear you talk and speak and nod in all the right places.

And she will water the fake plastic trees again.

MS admits serious Xbox Fault

Microsoft facing US$1.15bn Xbox 360 repair bill

HA-HA! (Nelson style) at all Xbox fanboys.

the stage

The electricity went. Not a major event my life lately, but I sat there in the dark, thinking. Your mind wanders down strange avenues when you’re half-asleep and half-awake, barely conscious.

Suddenly, in the middle of my stream of thought, the sound of the maghrib azaan broke through. My first impression upon hearing it, oddly enough, was a sense of loss. I recall being puzzled about it once I had identified the emotion. Why would the sound of a prayer call sounding bring about a sense of melancholy and loss?

I recall conversations I’ve had with highly religious/spiritual friends and their connections with religion and subsequently, with God. Does he exist? Faith is a tricky thing, it can defy all knowledge, shun all logic. I remember when I had faith, the absoluet and irrevocable kind.

As a child, I would think about what I wanted to be like when I grew up. Yes, I would actually sit down and think about what traits I liked about adults and what I didn’t, filing them all away for reference in my pre-adult years, as if we actually had a choice to be what we are or to choose to not be what we are. I recall resolutely thinking “I will never make my life revolve around money”. I recall thinking, as I grew older that God must exist because he had a weird sense of humor and if he didn’t, my thoughts were reaching nobody. You know you’re basically messed up when you crave company of a diety that plays cruel yet ironically funny tricks on you just to avoid the loneliness that comes from being a speck in a sand heap, identical to any other speck simply because nobody took the time to look closely enough to differentiate.

In the end, that is what terrifies me, the idea of being alone and insignificant. One moment of my life blending into the next in an endless movie reel playing to an empty theatre. Would you dare, if you got the chance, to turn the lights to the theatre on and see if there really was anyone watching? Or would you choose the way of ignorance and blissfully act out your part in the dark, hoping, nay, having faith that someone is in fact in the audience and one day, after the show is over, they may approach you backstage and offer their critiques or accolades.

This is why, I realized, I felt the sense of loss. Without actually having had the courage to turn on the lights, I have managed to convince myself that the theatre is empty and there will be no applause, nor even a “boo!” at the end of the final act. Just silence. And darkness. And in my dreams, I would stand there, waiting anxiously, during a moment that will go on forever, because even in my subconscious, I haven’t the courage to dream of the next moment. The one that will finally let me know if there really is someone out there or if it really is empty.

anime – an introduction

A word about Anime.

For those who are completely unfamiliar with anime (pronounced “Annie-may”) and all the joys of watching therein implied in its consonants, let me explain. If you should find grown men and women sitting and watching “Cartoons” which may or may not be in Japanese, they are watching anime. If you wish to piss them off, ask them why they’re watching these wierd cartoons when they’re not children anymore. Believe me, it works.

Anyhow, in the simplest possible language, anime differs from your regular tom and jerry and disney cartoons in several ways. First, most anime is made for adults, not children. A lot of anime series I’ve watched have a lot of lighthearted references to sex and mild nudity for the sake of a romance or comedic storyline, several curses (in Japanese, I might add), violence and gore. Most anime deals with mature themes and have complicated storylines. Some are specifically geared towards children, such as Pokemon, Digimon and the like. Some series are popular with children and adults alike since they have something for everyone, for example Naruto, Dragonball, Dragonball Z, etc.

To go into a lengthy description and comparision of what makes Anime different from regular old cartoons aimed at kids would be long winded and mainly repeating most of the information provided via other sources, which is neatly melded into one wikipedia article. Those interested can read up on the subject at this link.

The reason I bring it up is that I’ve finally gotten around to watching most of the anime I’ve accumulated and will probably start discussing/reviewing some soon, hence this introductory post for those who haven’t the foggiest about it.

online

And so I finally got paid. I do believe I have set a new record with regard to spending. One a.m, I got paid. Four a.m., back to zero.

Among the primary purchases that simply could not be held off was a DSL connection from Maxcom. Those who have known my long association with Worldcall may wonder at the change in attitude towards DSL. I had previously maintained to all who would ask for my humble opinion, that DSL in Pakistan was like riding a Pakistani made rollercoaster. If it worked and kept on working, it would give you a great ride, but if an issue pops up, you’re essentially screwed. Anyone who’s had to deal with Pakistani Government agencies and offices (I say Pakistani here because my experience with government agencies in other countries is severely limited. Perhaps this is a global problem?) knows the agonizingly slow and ultra-bureaucratic method with which they work. To visit a Pakistani government office usually entails a greasing of various palms as well as long periods of waiting to speak to someone who then declares you should have spoken to someone else, and that someone else would, with your luck, only just have stepped out for tea/lunch/urgent meetings and has been available for the last hour and half that you had been waiting.PTCL would be the relevant governmental agency involved in a DSL connection’s usage. From my experience they are slow to respond to customer complaints, the connection they provide is rarely, if ever, clear from noise and to visit to get something done entails all the above difficulties. Hearing of their new PTCL Broadband services (i.e. PTCL providing DSL via their own phone lines), I was intrigued. When I saw the prices they had slashed down to in order to steal away Worldcall, Maxcom and other DSL provider’s connections, I was very interested indeed. There was, however, a catch. Their normal DSL packages (128k onwards, with the exception of the 1Mb connections and up) have a download limit, and that too a highly improbably one for anyone interested in heavy downloading. For myself, the limit was chuckleworthy, since I download approximately 2Gb any given week. Moving on, what interested me was the fact that their initial package allowed for a three month connection at their low rates, plus no download limit. After the three months, the normal download caps would come into effect.

Transfixed by the idea of low rates and no download caps (at least for three months), I immediately called the provided number and asked all the questions I could think of regarding thier services. They managed to satisfactorily answer them, which went a long way towards pushing the image of your typical government run service out of my mind for a few days. I then provided them my information and requested a 256k connection from them. I was assured they would be getting in touch with me shortly and my connection would be up and working within the next 10 days. This was well over two weeks ago and I have yet to have anything installed at my home. Suffice it to say, I sense this as an omen of things to come and called up the good folks at PTCL Broadband to cancel. I was informed that I would have to fax a written request to this effect to a certain number to do so. I informed them that I had nothing installed and the connection was not even operating at my place yet, hence this was a cancellation of the installation request, not an actual connection. I was informed that I should wait for the technical staff to contact me and ask them to cancel it for me, as they could not do so themselves. 

Till date, I await their technical staff contacting me. Perhaps they have forgotten my order exists?

The second difficulty, which I knew of getting into the whole mess, was that if you should get a PTCL connection for DSL at your place and for some reason, say a month or so after using it, you want to cancel and get DSL from someone else. To do this, you must take an NoC form (I haven’t the foggiest what this would be, but I am assured a visit to PTCL’s office would ensure I have one in hand if even I should want one) and submit it to PTCL yourself otherwise no other DSL provider can touch the PTCL setup and replace it with their own. Nice, eh?

Anyhow, for these reasons, I have decided to switch to the (hopefully) more responsive, albeit more pricey, Maxcom. Updates on their services later, for anyone interested.As for Worldcall, I shall refrain from comment or else this post shall stretch overlong very quickly. Suffice it to say, with regard to connection stability, customer support and overall responsiveness to customer complaints are absolute rubbish. 

is it any wonder

Okay so, new university, substantial culture shock. First off, I joined good old SZABIST, my previous university purely because it offered a program I wanted and it was ten minutes away from my home. Nothing deep and intricate about it, laziness is about breaking down the complicated decisions to a few simple factors and making a quick choice. My new university is quite the opposite, situated in a highly crowded area of the city and the commute’s a killer. I regularly spend an hour in the afternoon wading through traffic and to see how long I can keep the smog out of my lungs by holding my breath.

Secondly, whilst I’m used to classes for a solid three hour block and only once a week per course, new university has 2-3 fifty minute classes per course per week. My initial reaction: Class is over? But it just barely began! How are we supposed to build up any momentum to a discussion in class if ten minutes out of the fifty go by in the small talk and attendance? Sheesh.

Thirdly, in the campus where I predominantly have my classes, there is only one loo. Yes, you heard me, about a half dozen batches of business students and only one loo for each gender. Having spent some time (out of necessity) in the aforementioned single loo, I have found I know far more than I ever  thought I would like to regarding some of my university mates’ ditary and digestive habits and oddities, thanks in large part to girls who walk in en masse and stand in from of the mirror and elect to discuss their bodily functions and the odd malfunctions.

Needless to say, I’m not really adjusting very well. I am a happy creature of habit and change disturbs me. Seems this is the price to pay for a masters degree.

on blogging

After speaking to an enthusiastic blogger friend today, I came to the realization that I miss blogging. The process of actually seeking the interesting in your life and times, condensing and refining it in your head until it sounds like something you may yourself want to read if you were to ever encounter it on a blog, and finally, the blurry movements of the fingers trying ever so hard to keep up with racing ideas. I do think I wish to start blogging regularly again, if just for the sake of talking out loud in a dark room that may potentially be empty or filled with people. We shall never know unless we speak out and wait.

a new beginning

Yosh! To update from the last post, I have now become an official graduate student and am now enrolled in the MBA program at a highly prestigious university in Karachi. This calls, of course, for the mandatory “first impressions” post regarding my new university and classmateshly prestigious university in Karachi. This calls, of course, for the mandatory “first impressions” post regarding my new university and classmates, something that’s always fun to look back upon a few years later once you’ve actually gotten to know and love the place and people. More soon…