Educated We Are...nah

Another thing that has really been bugging me lately is standard of education that we have in pakistan.I know, i know, its not rocket science but very old news!!! Oh and one more thing, im not talking about the fact that our literacy rate is very low or the plight of Government schools etc, here im concerned about the education standard of the private schools, yeah you heard me, no need to get flabbergasted.

See,i dont think there is much difference between our private schools and government schools because both stress on rote learning!! Even our very best and expensive private schools(okay, most of them) dont develope the creative abilities of the students, they don't help them to think independentally on their own. The syllabus is way too much and the students are expected to learn it all and not to apply their thinking skills.

Moreover, this trend of tuition centers and acadmies is beyond me but its the new rage, a kind of fashion statement!! you can see four and five year old kids going to tuitions and academies. See, it all comes back to the schools, if the course content and the patteren of exams had been much concept based and the teachers had done justice to their jobs i don't think the poor students will have to go to tuitions centers but our techers need to make money and today an academy or tuition center is the fastest way of earning some quick bucks, they even teach better at the academies and this i'm speaking from my very own personal experience... matlab what is the purpose of going to school if you are going to academies.. would'nt it be better that you dropped out of schools and just attended the academies, atleast your parents pockets will be heavier.

Abroad, the students learn all they need to at their schools and they even finish their homework at schools and spend considerable time playing sports. Here our students don't have time for after school sports because they have to go to their various tuitions etc, no wonder our younger generation is so lathergic and lazy!!! and the only "sports and relaxation " they know comes in the form of the computer games.

Handle every stressful situation like a dog...If you can't eat it or play with it,
just pee on it and walk away.

Strangeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

It was a bright sunny and humid afternoon of an ordinary day just like any other. I was lounging on the sofa , flicking through the idiot box in the vain search of catching some worthwhile to watch. Giving up the futile search, i stretched and yawned and pressed shuffle to set my brain on to the Daydreaming/Random Thoughts- Energy Saving mode. Couple of minutes passed and my lazy neurons finally caught a signel which told me k k ...itna dinno sa light nai ja rahi ....strangeeeee haina... Being in random thoughts mode, i had to test this hypothesis and look for reasons that substantiated the discovery and so i thought and thought but alas my nuerons wer'nt lucky anymore and concluded what the heck! just be thankful for what u have kahin nazar na lag gai and so i pressed the shuffle once again and set it on the Nap mode and drifted off.

I'm Jinxed....

Oh no no, not really, May Allah protect me from all evil,but when it comes to computers...like hell i am!!!

See, the thing is that everytime our computer crashes ....its because of me. We got our first computer when i was in, i guess grade 7th and since then every single time its been out of order, the credit has always found its way back to me.

And before any of you think that i take some sort of weird pleasure in blowing the machine off..i don't okay, i seriously don't. Instead i dont even have any freakin idea about what i do wrong to make it crash. I mean ok ok! i accept that i'm not much of a computer guru but then i'm not a complete dork either who does not know how to switch it on, work on the microsoft word, powerpoint,surf the net etc and shut it down properly but everytime the windows have been corrupted; the last person to use it had been me..who else?

I dont know what is wrong with me. In these summer vacations alone i have managed to crash it THREE times, the first time something went wrong with the internet connection. The next time was when i switched it one one bright sunny afternoon, the damned CPU did'nt work and now i have managed to do something to the Monitor!! bravo bravo bravo... sigh... so you see why i cant help thinking if i'm jinxed.... lets just pray that now when i switch this thing off after hitting the publish button, it does get switched on when someone tries to use it the next time or my brother will kill me.. not that he did'nt try this time..

A Letter

This piece came out in the Jang Sunday Magzine, a local urdu newspaper.

Its basically a letter by a mother for Bilawal Bhutto and its too good. It puts in words what this nation is going through quite literally and points out a finger towards the attitude of our so called politicians. It might never reach the one it was meant for but i just thought its worth reading, it comes straight from heart, if u ask me it should be read in the 9:00 news so that our leaders can hear where things stand in reality..... so i have posted the link... its quite long actually, at first i had planned to translate it but that would take too much time since i'll have to sit with an urdu-to-english translation dictionary.. so heres the links,do read it!!!!

http://www.jang.net/jang_mag/detail_article.asp?id=7362

Lucky We Are

Its been a boring summer so far, oh and not to forget a really scorching one too but the temperatures have dropped a degree or so and monsoon is here so its gonna be all good now. But this post is not about the heat...

I read these two books " A Tale of Two Cities " by Charles Dickens and "Zoya" by Danielle Steel. Now both these book were set at the time of Revolutions. A Tale of Two Cities takes place during the French Revolution and Zoya is set during the Russian Revolution and are basically good reads especially the first one. The books paint a very grim and sad picture of Revolutions, bloodshed, loss, mindless voilence etc etc and this got me thinking that how lucky we actually are.

Im sure all of us have heard that " ya mulk bari kurbaniyoon ka baad hasil howa ha" ( we got this country after a lot a sacrifices) and i never realized how true that was until now. Seriously we are so damn lucky to have gotten our homeland on golden platter, we didnt have to fight for it, we didnt lose our homes, our families, our loved ones, we didnt see our homes being destroyed infront of our eyes, our lives being torn apart.. man Lucky we really are!!!

The Smug Princess

Mum is out of town, so the responsibility of carrying out chores, falls on my fragile shoulders. Now usually, i do not help around that much.. if you ask me, i most surely do!! but it goes a bit unnoticed as i am oh- so- lazy.. so obviously, you guys can imagine my smug expressions and my happiness for doing everything that i was asked to do.

Its lunch time and I'm busy making the salad. I take out a cucumber from the fridge , wash it and am half way through peeling it when i realize that probably its rotten, its all white n not the usual light green n i don't see any seeds either. Its better to get a second opinion, so i show it to ma brothers who say, "yup its not right so throw it away."
During the lunch time..

elder bro: yaar koi kheera nai ha? ( isn't there any cucumber left)

me: hain tuo shai lakin saree kharab hain. ( there are, but all of them are rotten)

elder bro: achaa (ok)

me : yup (i go into the kitchen and bring back the bag containing all the cucumbers) see ..

younger bro{ finally lifts his lazy head from his plate, goes into a momentary shocks, gives me a peculiar smile and exclaims in a laughter- tinged voice}: mere akalmand behn ya sub kheera nahin hain ya torian hain!!! (ma genius sister these are not cucumbers, these are "torian"... i don't know the English word for it but its a very common vegetable belonging to the pumpkin family)

the laughter- tinged voice turns into very loud howls of laughter with my elder bro and me also joining in.. so much so for all the smugness and happiness..

p.s:in case you wanted to know, we did manage to have some cucumbers.. well i couldn't find them but kudos to my younger bro who did manage to fish one from the depths of the deep freezer.

Freeze It Right There!

This thing called time is going just too fast man!!

I mean it just seems like yesterday that i was in school n we had the time of our lives.. high school, God n miss my Alevels n i hated it when i started college , 4 years seemed like so long, eternity... but i have just freakin realized that more than half of it is just gone, went, flown by...

Dunno if its just me, i guess its just me but i feel so old, so grown up!!! i miss my childhood, many of ma friends are already married and two are even a moms!!

For the love of GOD, i hate growing up, hate the idea that so many of us grew up together, spent so many years of our lives together, lead the same kind of life, shared the bad times, good times, worries, lame jokes, laughter and suddenly it all ends. Suddenly, lives change!!! people go threir seperate ways, on different paths, on different journeys..

College n school reminds me of fireworks, you light one and a ray of light goes up in to the sky, higher and higher and then Boom, all of it seperates and different coloured lights are seen going away from a center point in all 360 degree directions.... and this makes me very sad!!

So why does time move so fast especially when you dont want it to???? Can somebody just freeze it right there, no dont freeze it but put it in a slower mode!!!

Guess If You Can!!

oh im there,
n im here too,
im always with you everywhere,
i sing lullaby to you when you cant sleep,
n you wake up thinking of me in the morning,
then neither do i ever let you out of my sight during the day,
such is my love for you,
that you might hate me,
but im always there with you!!!!

Guess who i am???
oh come on, it aint that hard, ya put on that thinking cap..chuhhh put a brick on it too if you cant guess!!!! bad bad very very bad, ok times up pal..breaks ma heart, oh im having a heart attack call the ambulance someone plzzzzzzzz..... deep breaths, sighs..... come here bring your ears near you blokehead....deep breath n coughs...this is confidential....im..im ..im a MOSQUITO.... n dies.

oh yes, darn!! how could i forget when you are right infront of ma eyes even now n im repeatedly scratching ma right foot you, thanks to you pal!!!

ya can some one plz tell me how to get some blessed minutes of privacy from ma ever present little friend for all the sprays coils mats seemed to have stop workin!!!

" the most confusing thing in this life is just too much information"

Why ???

Why are people so negative?
Why do people form preconceived notions?
Why are they so stubborn?
Why do they have huge egos?
Why cant they see the good in the other person?
Why cant they forgive n even forget?
Why does everything have to be labeled black n white?
Why does life has to be made so utterly impossibly superdoper complicated?

The Lost Festival

After a gap of two years, the skies of Lahore, once again, got filled with colorful kites.

Basant although has its origins in being a Hindu festival honoring Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, music and art, it is a vital part of the Pakistani culture. In the pre-partitioned Punjab, especially in Lahore, the Muslims of Punjab also celebrated the Basant by flying kites. Although it was a Hindu or folk festival but they considered kite flying as an event. Thus, this festival became a part of our of history, culture and legacy especially the Punjabi culture.

Being the historic capital of Punjab there is no other place where Basant is celebrated with as much vigour and enthusiasm as in the ancient city of Lahore. Although traditionally it was a festival confined to the old-walled city it has spread all through out the city. Though it is now celebrated as all over Pakistan, it is Lahore which has made it popular, not only in Pakistan but also in the world, as the largest kite flying event. Therefore since 1947, with the arrival of spring, the Lahoreis get on their roofs and indulge in this art ( yes flying a kite is an art) to their hearts content.

Alas! or so it was, before it got stained by the blood of all those men, women, and children who lost their lives to it. But its not the festival to be blamed, its the people who make and use those metallic or chemical strings and also those who love take some weird pleasure in aerial firing!!! The death toll got immensely high in the last three to four years. Came basant and the papers started shoving heartrending stories and at times, gross pictures of the people who became the victims of chemical or metallic strings and aerial firing, in our faces. It got too depressing that i started loathing this festival which was once a source of immense joy and thrill. Then understandably, the government banned the festival in 2005, but yes we did get to celebrate it that year however, not in 2007 and 2008.

This year too, kite flying lovers, my bros for example, got their wish. Although for completely different reasons,lets not go into those, this post is not sing praises of the current asses running the country, i meant bosses.. slip of fingers on keyboard. The point is that this basant, i realized that i don't hate the festival , i hate those loathsome people. period.

Basant is an integral part of my childhood memories and i can bet of all the Lahories. Its just sad that because of some inhumane humans, this festival which was once harmless, ask your parents aunts uncles grandparents, is being turned into a life sucking (literal meaning intended) monster.

I just wish it wouldn't be so, or it would and it Should be banned because like they say..humain izzat rass nai atti!!

Good Story Gone Bad

Its been a while since i blogged... okay what do i write... im staring at the keyboard and the white space and trying mighty hard to get something out....come on .. come on.. today im not going to close this window without getting done what i wanted to..... OK so what to write... what to write...aha!! yes yes why not this....so without further ado..

Few days back, there was this book, making waves all over. So i too decided to jump on to the bandwagon and read the much- talked-about Twilight.

For those of you who don't know, Twilight is the first novel of the series by Stephenie Meyer. The other novels of the series are New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. The main cruxes of the story is that its a love story of vampire/ the- pagan-god-of-good-looks (Edward Cullen) and a teenage mortal turned- into- a- vampire girl (Bella Swan).

Now, the point of writing this post is not to tell you the story, read it yourself that is if you have the patience of a saint,which might i add, ah im proud (only for being patient) to say that i have read the entire damned series!

So without further beating about the bush, i'll come directly to the point.. what really boggles my mind is: o why, o why, o why for the love of all that's holy, are people crazy about this book?? Ok,ok i don't say that i hate it..hate is too much a strong word but im no big fan of it either. Wanna know why, here goes:

Its major flaw is that its toooo long.. irrespective of the adventures if we can call them that, at the end of the day ,its a love story and love stories are bound to get boring and repetitive at one point or the other. You know if we plotted a graph of its story being interesting, it would be like a very steep kind of bell shaped graph, if you can imagine how that would be like... ever seen an ECG..well not really but you get the picture. Really, fine we get it he loves her, she loves him, cant live without each other, can we move on....in the words of my friend, " it gets lovey dovey a bit too much". Many of you would say that being a love story, it is supposed to be lovey dovey.. but this is exactly what im trying to say had she not given this story on about 2500 pages, it would have been easier to digest.

Many people say that she made it into a series to earn money like the Harry Potter books, i agree that yes, money it does earn but in terms of content, its not even close. It would have much much better is she could have combined the 2nd and 3rd books for nothing much too important happens in them, i mean there is little action, especially in the 2nd and much more sitting idle and dwelling on emotions. 4th and 1st are better at least, something is going on.

Oh and then there are a few important aspects of this book which just makes you want to roll your eyes followed by a steam of good, solid curses and then slam the book on the wall or table,basically any hard surface near you, and ripe off its pages and finally throw it into the fire or flush it down the commode... i mean seriously woman, give me a break!!... sorry people the aspects are not fit to be discussed on a blog but they just show that she just wants to make money.

Really makes me wonder what all the hype was all about.. oh yes i figured it myself, wow man im intelligent! oh sorry, coming back... the hype is only because of the movie and might i add, that too only because of Robert Pattinson.. go digest the fact!

So i guess this is about it for now, cant think of other loopholes.. will update when i remember others. See from a birds eye view, the story is good i just wish she could have dealt it in a much better way. So i completely agree with the criticism from author Stephen King,which he gave in a December 2008 interview to USA Weekend. When asked about how his work may have influenced both Meyer and J.K. Rowling, King said the following: "Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. ... The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."

Its a good story gone just too damn bad.

" life sucks and then it ends"

2 aur Duo Char

OK now moby tagged me to do this simple fun tag post.. ya i know i am late, my apologies. so without further ado..

4 Places I Go to Over and Over Again

4. Er...er... some market
3. School
2. My Nani's place
1. College

4 People Who Mail Me Regularly

4. 4shared team
3. Kinnaird environment society
2. Hotmail team
1. Friends

4 of My Favourite Places to Eat

4. Any gol gappa wala
3. French fries wala, anytime anywhere
2. Anywhere in college except the cafe
1. Home

4 Places I’d Rather be Now

4. Rome or any European city
3. A theme park taking all kinds of crazy rides.
2. A hill station, preferably Kalam
1. Where i already am, home

4 Favourite TV Shows

4. Home improvement, steps to a new you
3. Nigella feasts
2. Drake and josh
1. Full house ( loved this sitcom)

4 Movies I Could Watch Again and Again

4. Step up 2
3. A walk to remember
2. Hunters
1. 27 dresses

and lastly 4 people to be tagged

4. hfm

3. e.t

2. a. joe

1. summer

Irrepareable Damage

If she had ever wished for death, it was now.

We are allowed to make mistakes, instead this is precisely what makes us human, however, we are not allowed to make the mistake that destroys us; that one fatal mistake.

She had committed her fatal error. It was not that she had robbed a bank neither had she planned an assassination of someone or murdered a person. But no, she had, indeed, killed a person. However, her weapon of choice was not a gun, poison or axe etc, her weapon was only her words; venomous, spear- shaped words which had pierced the heart of her victim, a fate equally worse as death, an irreparable damage.

The irony was that it was not the victim who suffered the most, it was the oppressor because she had hurt the only person who mattered the most on the earth to her.

The knowledge that it was the first time in her life that she had lost control worked as fuel being added to the fire. The heartache that she had caused to the other was unbearable and even more unbearable was the thought that it was she, of all the people, who was responsible for it.

She will be forgiven but she was not oblivious to the fate that the wounds do heal ultimately but the scars are always there for eternity and that the wounds inflicted by tongue do more damage than those by the sword. She continuously suffered from the pain that she had caused. She was alone now. How she wished for the earth to open up and conceal her in its folds and to numb the ceaseless pain. That pain, that terrible, heartrending pain was now her only companion as she journeyed deeper and deeper into the dark, thick and thorny jungle of remorse.

Her fatal mistake had destroyed her, had tainted her relationship with her most beloved person in the big bad world, most importantly, her fatal mistake had tarnished her image in her own eyes, brought her down on her knees with her head hung low and face shielded, by the curtain of her hair, from the world. Oh she could face the rest of the world, she was in fact, with the humility of a wrongdoer. In the days to come, people will forgive and forget, but the million-dollar question was how would she Forget and Forgive herself??