A soldier signals towards flood victims from an Army helicopter as they prepare to be evacuated from the Muzaffargarh district of Punjab province on August 9, 2010. - Photo by Reuters.

As per statistics from United Nations, this flood is worse than Tsunami and Kashmir, Haiti earthquakes. Although the death toll is significantly lower but as per UN estimates, a total of 13.8 Million people have been affected.

I don’t need to say anything else except that we should repent to Allah for our sins. If you feel that all this repenting business is childish and fantasy, please read this column which clearly expresses what I want to say about this.

Please help your brothers and sisters in this hour of need while our Media is busy projecting the ‘shoe incident’. These are our own people and they need us like never before. Please remember that it was only a rain which wreaked this havoc and nobody from us ‘Mighty’ Humans has the authority or ability to stop this kind of thing happening again.

Help your brother and sisters through all your means and at your earliest before it is too late.

OK, I know this is a very feminish song but I am looking for great Shaadi songs right now because I am the official DJ. You know the guy who plays very loud deafening music in Shaadis . And right now, I am scouring the internet to find Shaadi songs. Although I can always listen Jagjit Singh 24/7 but I don’t want to hear my sister, wife and cousins saying that “Kya bakwas gaana lagaya hua he”. In short, help me out

I am on leave for whole of next week and I will be in Rawalpindi during the next week Inshallah. BTW, shaadi is on 2nd, 3rd and 4th of April and all the readers are cordially invited. Drop me an email to get the locations and official invitation.

Aur han, shaadi se yaad aaya, Shaibee ???????????? You know what I mean

Yesterday, while driving back home on his motorbike, he had a terrible accident and died at the spot. May Allah bless him with his rahmah. Nobody at SSI is smiling today. The guy who was just like our brother has passed away and we can’t do anything about it. Life doesn’t look good today. More importantly, life looks a lot more fragile today than ever. Please pray for him.

I don’t want to remember his dead face so here is a photograph of him full of life:

Faisal

Meeting is just over.

You are feeling hungry.

There is another meeting at 10PM.

You can’t go outside to eat.

Solution:

Pickup the phone and order Fri-Chicks Special Deal. It is equivalent to KFC’s WOW Meal and costs Rs.150 less than that. And taste is almost equivalent to that of KFC.

I have done this a few times and I have found Fri-Chicks to be a very good alternative to KFC. And did I mention, it costs way less?

And after discovering things like this I have sort of understood that why they say “L’hore L’hore Hey”

پڑھ پڑھ علم تے فاضل ہویا وے کدے  اپنے آپ نوں پڑھیا نیئں
پج پج وڑدا ہیں وچ مندر مسیتے وے کدے من اپنے وچ وڑھیانیئں
لڑنا روز شیطان دے نال وے کدے نفس اپنے نال لڑیا نیئں
بللھے شاہ آسمانی اڈدیاں پھڑونا ایں وے جیڑا گھر بیٹھیا انوں پھڑیا نیئں

A fellow blogger directed me to CokeStudio and I am absolutely hooked on to this song. The poetry is just awesome and the way it is sung is fabulous. Get yourself a copy from www.cokestudio.com.pk. Look for Saeen Zahoor in 1st Episode and you will get to the download link for this song. Song is titled ‘Aik Alif’. Listen and Enjoy.

For the lazy ones, here is the direct link.

Everyone of us must have done so. I mean I am sure we kill Mosquitos, Flies, Wasps, Cockroaches, All those creepy little insects and the like. But yeah, you are right, these are not animals, these are insects. I have done countless killings like this. I may well be a Terminator if all this counts.

But well, I am not talking about this type of killing. I am talking about killing a real animal who has four legs, a tail, a head, a body and all the other pre-requisites.

I killed a dog this Friday night when I was going to Rawalpindi from Lahore via G.T. Road. It came in front of my car suddenly and I did not have enough time to stop or change direction. So, I hit him bang straight. The poor animal rolled at least 10-12 times in front of me and eventually fell into a road-side ditch. Car got hurt a little and I had to spend some money to get it fixed but the bad thing about this was that I had just took a life and if you are a normal human being, this is never a good memory to have. I was sort of speechless for some time. It felt weird and strange. I was feeling a little bit guilty thinking that probably my feet would have reacted a bit differently on the brakes had it been (Khuda na Khawasta) a human and this guilt is still occupying me a little bit.

Believe me, It’s not fun.

It all started when I got an email that my wife had joined facebook. Me, being in Lahore thought that she must be online right now so it is a good time to chat with her. I instantly added her in Google Chat from my Google Mail and saw that she was waqa’ee online.

I opened the chat window and started conversation in my usual way like ‘oey, kya ho raha hey’. The response I got was a bit strange. Response was ‘I am a bit busy right now, will talk to you later‘ and something like: ‘yeh tarz-e-takhatub kutch ajeeb nahi thaa‘. I was a bit surprised at this reaction so I pinged her again and I got the response saying ‘I am busy, will talk to you later‘. I thought what is this going on and called my wife on phone. She told me that she never replied to anything, in fact she said that she didn’t even open the chat window to chat with me. I was left stunned at all this. Anyway, I came back to my seat and tried to investigate a little further and what I found out was amusing to say the least.

The name of my wife starts with ‘S’ and her father’s name is Rafiq so her initials are like “srafiq”. The person with whom I was chatting had initials like ‘srafique’ as well. After digging down this thing a little further, I came to know that the person whom I was chatting with was ‘Salman Rafique’ aka Fifu, an old colleague at Ultimus and a very good friend. And when I told him that I was thinking him to be my wife, he was like:

There is quite an uproar about this thing from Microsoft in the tech industry. You can find details at this link on how to uninstall this nasty little piece from your Firefox browser.

So, nowadays, I am trying to make my eyes see things and make my mind feel the accomplishment of having seen Lahore (and in turn having seen something).

I started for Lahore from Rawalpindi on 6th of June, 2009 and believe me, its outright boring to drive on Motorway when you are alone. I am seriously thinking about using G.T. Road more often which inspite of all the bad things associated with it has alteast some life around it. Motorway is cool but it is a little bit too cool sometimes.

My first impression of Lahore is that it is a rich place. My friends tell me that this impression is because of the fact that
I am in better areas of Lahore right now. Another thing about Lahore is that traffic moves way faster than Rawalpindi. Roads are wider, amount of traffic is bigger but the speed of traffic is faster as well. The frequency of huge buildings is also way bigger than those in Rawalpindi/Islamabad. And yes, CNG is cheaper, I don’t know why but it is. These are my initial thoughts so don’t take these seriously .

I lost my way to office on the very first day. I was going from Barkat Market to Canal Road, I had to take the left turn to Canal Road towards Johar Town but I somehow managed to miss the turn and ended up going straight. When I had travelled quite a distance the traffic started being thicker and slower and I was like “there is a lot of traffic in the early office hours” but very soon I realized that I am on the wrong way. I asked a Rickshaw-wala key “Paa jee, Neher kithey hey” and he said “Tusee bohet aggay aa gaye ho, Neher tey pitchy reh gayee hey“. I managed to reach office only 12 minutes late.

On my way back, I tried a different route and lo n behold, I lost my way again. I had a general sense of direction though due to which I managed to get back on track. Actually, I was trying to find a restaurant in Faisal Town where I had dinner on Sunday night alongwith 3 other friends. I roamed around the roads but couldn’t find the restaurant. Today, I found out that while I was looking around, I had passed infornt of that restaurant. Now, this is a new habit that I have developed in Lahore, I continuously try to keep myself concentrated on not missing a turn/underpass/shop etc and still I miss that. :S Weird, isn’t it? Am I getting old or what?

One song that kept circling in my head was “Ajnabi Sheher key Ajnabi Raaste” by Salman Alvi and for the first time in my life, I understood how it feels to be alone in an Ajnabi sheher.