Sense of touch.

I poked the stylus on the 'Internet Explorer' icon on the screen, but nothing happened. I tried again, and still nothing. The white and blue internet explorer icon stared back at me defiantly as if saying "Haha .. I'm the one in control here, not you!"
And then I noticed it. A small crack towards the top of the screen. I figured it was just a spec of dust (since it had been sitting all day in my pocket with my keys and bunch of other stuff) I rubbed the screen with my sleeve willing the crack to go away. Instead, the crack seemed to have gotten longer.

Wtf? This could not be happening to me. I needed to get access to the internet to pull up the directions to go to the laser tag place from Mount Bonelle in Austin. Btw, this was my first time playing Laser Tag and it was soo much fun. Our team beat the crap out of the blue team. And I felt kinda cool crouching behind a wall holding out my laser gun in Tom Cruise - Mission Impossible style. Point, Aim and Bang. And the next thing you know, a 15 year old kid sneaks up, and puts a couple of (metaphorical) slugs in me.

But anyway .. back to my trusty old PDA. I felt the world caving up on me. All the cool things that I used to do with my pda started flashing before my eyes. Real time traffic reports, unlimited access to gmail, playing mp3s through my car stereo using an FM transmittor and streaming audio. Not to mention all those (not too) awesome software that I created in my leisure time. Oh one of the most ingenious applications I created was 'The UnSnoozable". It was an alarm clock application that lets you snooze only 5 times. Each time you snooze it, the snooze button becomes smaller. And eventually the snooze button becomes invisible and you need to take out the stylus, open your eyes and type in an 8 digit random number displayed on the screen. The sad part was that the application was only used once and the next morning, I actually overslept because the darn program had too many bugs in it.

Anyway ... my 18 month old companion that was by my side 24/7 is dying (I'm talking about the phone/PDA) The touch screen is all cracked and doesn't work. I don't want to go back to using regular cell phones because they're just so .. so .. inadequate .. and I can't really afford buying another PDA phone. So, I had to improvise and learn how to use the phone without using the touch screen at all. I admit it's a little hard to navigate, but I'll just have to do until my cell phone contract expires or if the phone just gives up on me. lol

Rantings of an introvert !

I was labeled as an introvert, in front of my whole class. And as if that wasn’t enough to make me squirm, my Meyer Briggs personality report was held up high in the air to for everybody to see the rare occurrence, when the bar charts showed me highly introverted in all 5 aspects. *sigh*
And then to my horror, all of us introverts were herded into one corner of the class, while the extroverts gathered in the other corner.

I’m talking about my ‘Career Management’ class yesterday, in which we were given out our Meyer Briggs personality test results. I was branded as an ‘INFJ’ which was somewhat different from my previous test results. Anyway, after the class was divided into two groups, they were both asked to come up with things that they liked and disliked about the other groups.

A couple of interesting things that were noted about the two groups were:

• 80% of the people in the introverted group were wearing either blue or black. (For some reason I had decided to wear my favorite blue shirt that day)
• All the extroverts were standing really close to each other while the introverts kept their distance.
• The extroverts just couldn’t stop talking among themselves, while us introverts just finished the job at hand and then were trying to make uncomfortable small talk. (Did I mention that small talk sucks?)

Anyway … following are the things that my extrovert counterparts didn’t like about us:

• It’s really hard to get us (introverts) get excited about stuff. (Which is rubbish … I do get excited about things sometimes, but I just keep it to myself)
• We don’t talk! (duh .. if I start talking too … who is going to listen to you when you’re talking incessantly about anything and everything)
• We sometimes don’t understand what’s going on in meetings etc. (if we’re quiet, that doesn’t mean we’re stupid. I’d rather stay quiet and let you take control of things until you do/say something wrong, and then I’ll offer my expert opinion that will leave people dumbfounded. hehe)
• We write long emails instead of using the phone. (Oops … I think this blog post is getting quite long too. Oh and yeah, I do prefer emails over making actual phone calls)

So, next time when you see an introvert displaying some of these similar characteristics, try not to judge us based on what you see. We are just regular people with regular feelings. We are just a little stingy with words sometimes and like to keep things to ourselves if we dont know you that well.
And to set the record striaght I wore a green polo to work today (and I felt rebellious for some reason) ;)

Learning new games

Rhyming Words
One person says a word, and then somebody else has to think of a word that rhymes with the first one. Who ever comes up with the correct rhyming word get to pick the next one.

Action Words (This is a hard one)
Think of an action verb, and then somebody else needs to come up with a word that represents an action opposite to the one initially chosen. For example sit - stand.

I Spy ....
As you walk, one person sees an object for example a yellow flower and says something like 'I spy a yellow flower' and then the other people have to look around and try to find that flower. Whoever finds it first wins and gets a turn to say 'I spy .....'

Guess what, I learned all these games from a couple of 6 year olds yesterday.

Last night, I had dinner at my aunts place. After the dinner, I decided to go out for a short walk. As I was about to leave, I saw my two cousins Zainab and Mujhtaba (who are 6 year old fraternal twins See Pics ) waiting for me at the door with shoes and jackets on. Since I didnt really have a choice, I had to take them with me.

As we started walking, they they suggested that we play the games mentioned above. They taught me how to play them and it was soo much fun. Due to their limited vocablury they tried to get away with words that didnt mean anything. And they tried to make their answers funny. For example, Mujhtaba said 'I spy a blue window' and we looked everywhere but couldnt find a blue window. So finally he laughs and say 'I was just kidding .. there's no blue window because I made it up' and we all cracked up and started laughing.

That short walk just made my day yesterday. The conversation was fun, and free from any complexity or worries. It's almost like you forget about everything that's going on in the world and just look at things from their point of view which usually is quite innocent and worry free.

Fun times!

Kids these days!

My nephew Faaz has his own blog now.
He's about 20 months old ... and his blog contains mostly videos and pictures.
Check it out : http://faazoo.blogspot.com

(Im afraid, the videos might be a little boring for those of you who dont know him personally. But personally, I think he's really cute in those videos)

Red on brown?

Okay .. so I knew that we south asians have managed to spread out in almost all parts of the world, especially in the US.
But I was in no way prepared for this when I saw Natasha Bedingfield in a video wearing a t-shirt which had the word 'DESI' emblazoned on it.
Finally !!! Global acceptance of the fact that we desis rock! hehe.
The text on the t-shirt looked something like this:

Upon further browsing, I found some other words like INSPI(RED), TREASU(RED), EMPOWE(RED) .....

And the truth dawned on me .. and I was completely crushed lol.

So, we're still not there yet with our plan to take over the Americas. (India just needs to export a few more of their IT guys and we'll be right there ;)

The silent spectators.

In the last couple of days, I heard a couple of desi domestic stories about 2 different families. And they both had the same common theme ... something that makes me feel sick whenever I think about it.
Im talking about the frustration, suffering and despair that a girl's parents go through after they marry their daughter off. It's like raising your girl for 20+ years, catering to her every whim and protecting her from every adverse situation, you end up sending her away one night after a rather elaborate wedding ceremony.
She just goes away to another home, to live with people who she's met only a couple of dozen times. And SPEND HER WHOLE LIFE there whether she likes it there or not.

I will never forget the night when we came back home after my younger sister's wedding more than 2 years ago. The house that was a beehive of activity only a couple of hours earlier, was deserted. The silence was deafening and sad look on my mom's face was heart breaking.
There was a person missing from our family now. I wanted to shout out aloud and say 'Mom .. we just left my sister over there. She's all alone and scared' .... Knowing my sister so well, I knew she would be feeling uncomfortable and lonely among so many unknown people, wishing she was back in our home where she spent 20 years of her life.
But instead, we just went around our normal nightly routine, trying to act as if everything was perfectly fine.

Anyway ...I got side tracked with my sister's story .. but the point I'm trying to make is that a girl's parents become mere spectators after the wedding. Unless it's something really major, they just sit there and watch how their daughter is being treated without having any say in it. I dont know these two families (the ones that I mentioned in the start) very well, but I just wont be able to look at them in the eye again. Im afraid that they'll see my sympathy for them about their lack of say in their daughter's married life.

I think this is where I like the western way of doing these things better. The kids just decide for themselves about who they want to marry and thus relieving the parents from any guilt of possibly choosing the wrong spouse for their kid.

Trip to LA/San Diego/Las Vegas

Quite big for a horse isnt it?

Gangsta!

Tahir and Mahira.

Road trip to San Diego.

ASD/AMD Trade Show in Vegas with my uncle.