A Blogging Hiatus

Lately, it seems like I'm getting pulled in several different directions and I never have time to do everything that I'm supposed to do. Plus I'm at an inflexion point in my life where I'm not sure where I'll end up. And even though there's only a handful of people who check this blog ... I still feel a little guilty of not keeping it up to date. When I started blogging, there were about 20 blogs that I kept up with, and now only 4 of them are still active. Which tells a lot about soul barring/rant heavy blogging in the long run. They don't often scale over in long term unless you write about something purposeful that you feel strongly about.

I actually miss reading about lives of strangers (spread all around the world) who felt like friends because I followed their blogs & they followed mine. But now I feel like it'll take too much effort to find new people to follow. So I just follow a handful of tech blogs which gives me enough material to read while I goof off at work or fill space on sleepless nights.

So, I think I'll take a break from blogging for some time. I still do a lot of writing, but that's being done at http://www.pkstudent.com . It's more purposeful and more rewarding than my usual ramblings.

In the meantime, help us spread the word about http://pkstudent.com and if you'd like to volunteer - email me.

Ciao

Good Friday

My DirectTv (satellite tv) suddenly started showing HBO even though I haven't subscribed to
it. (Technical glitches in hi-tech equipment can prove to be good sometimes)



Got a coupon for two free games at a hi-tech driving range called top-golf. So you can guess what I'll be doing tonight after work.


Just received my new cell phone that I ordered a couple of days ago. And no, it's not an iphone. After using brick sized pdas/phones for a few years, I've actually transitioned towards decent sized cellphones (Still a smart phone though). I'll have to spend this weekend bonding with my new phone :p




I've got plans to go watch the Indian movie 'Race' today. Lets hope it's as good as the trailers make it sound.



And last but not the least .. it's FRIDAY!! I've had one helluva week .. so I'm looking forward to getting a little R&R this weekend.

LUMS - Comics

Came across this blog during one of those pointless browsing at work .. it's pretty funny and does bring back some memories of LUMS.
Here's some of funny ones.









The girl in the above picture reminds me of my best friend Aman. You would have thought that this tendency to outperform all his peers would end after he graduated from college. But NO! During the ski lessons in New Mexico last weekend, he was with us in our group of eight friends. And while the rest of us were still trying hard to stay on our feet and not fall down, Aman was gliding down the slope (almost effortlessly) and became a favorite of our ski instructor. It felt like I was back in one of our classes at LUMS where Aman would be asking all these ridiculously advanced questions to the teacher, while the rest of us sat there giving him murderous looks .. lol

*edit* btw, I exaggerated that a little ... Aman is one of the smartest people I know but he continues to underestimate himself. I think his down to earth nature is what everybody loves about him ... (if I were a girl, I would have ended this with a 'Muaah') LOL

I'm a nomad .....

I've moved so many times in the last 5 years I've been in the US.
And I moved again last weekend and while I was lugging a huge couch up to the 3rd floor, I decided I'd write a blog post about my moving experiences that I might one day read and laugh about. Here it is:

Dates	Comments about the Apartment	Reasons for Leaving
Feb 2003 - Sep 2003	In Arlington, TX First ever home of my own. I shared the apartment with my cousin and set it up (like a typical bachelor pad) It was a lot of fun and I did my first cooking experiments there. Being the place of my own, I’ll always have fond memories of the place.	One of my best friends from Pakistan moved to Arlington, so we decided to get a bigger apartment.
Sept 2003 – April 2004	Still in Arlington, TX A nice place with a view of the pool. And the rent was soo cheap – it wasn’t long before we found out why. The apartment complex was highly subsidized by the city to provide housing for the less fortunate (read unemployed – I’m trying not to sound racial here) people.	The neighborhood was so bad I remember that I used to hide my laptop in my dirty clothes basket when I would leave the apartment because I was afraid of a break-in.
April 2004 – Dec 2004	Arlington, TX Moved to a nice apartment complex. Decided to spend a little money on furniture to make this place look like home. Another friend moved in with us from Tyler but soon left afterwards.	My cousin bought a used mattress which was accompanied by tons of bed-bugs. After they spread out to all our furniture (and several failed fumigation attempts) we decided to trash all our furniture and move.
Dec 2004 – June 2005	Still in Arlington, TX Back to a small apartment with no furniture.	I finally graduated and got a job in Dallas. Since my roommates were still in college, we decided to get a plan halfway between Dallas and Arlington.
June 2005 – November 2005	Irving TX A really huge 3 bedroom apartment with a view of the pool again. We all pitched in to buy new furniture for the apartment and swore we wouldn’t move again – even though it felt like we were living in the middle of little-mexico. :p	Little did we know that God had other plans for us. One sunny Saturday morning, our neighbor burned down the whole building. Luckily I was able to get out of there in time with one shoe on and my work laptop. (my personal laptop died in that fire *sniff sniff*
November 2005 – June 2006	Irving, TX The apartment complex gave us a smaller apartment that was available at that time. Note that we were back at square zero without any furniture.	My cousin also graduated and we decided to split with our other roommate (due to differences in opinions) and we moved to Dallas
June 2006 – April 2007	Dallas, TX A nice little 2 bed, 2 bath apartment in a predominantly white neighborhood with our own country club, lakes, jogging trail and a bar !!! We bought furniture AGAIN !!!!	My cousin decided to move back to Pakistan and I decided to move to a place of my own.
April 2007 – Feb 29 2008	Dallas, TX Still in the same neighborhood and living by myself. Life got a little boring at this time.	Got bored and when a friend decided to move in this area, we decided to get a place together.
March 1st – present	Just moved in this new place last weekend. It’s an awesome place and we again have a view of the pool!! We bought more furniture here – lets see how long this lasts.	Lets see what its going to be this time. I have a feeling it’s going to be soon !!!

Feeling emotional?

I was in my car last night, driving at around 40 mph - It was dark, cloudy and the road was almost deserted. The radio was blaring but I was lost in thought about yet another peculiarity of life and was barely listening to the babbling of the radio DJ.

And then this song came up. In the backdrop that I just described to you above ... the song was just mesmerizing. I hung on to every single word and could feel the emotions behind each sentence. It was a feeling that I can't replicate again even if I listen to the song a hundred times.

So if you haven't seen 'Tare Zameen Par' go check it out.

Data Center art !!

Now we've seen almost all kinds of art .. but i can assure you that you havent seen this.





Now for a little bit less aesthetically pleasing data center sights .... or u can call this a network admin nightmare :p


And a totally random treat for those of you who don't keep your monitors clean:
http://cache.valleywag.com/assets/resources/screenclean.swf

Courtesy:
http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=240
http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=234

D x V x FS > R

One thing that you would notice about engineers is that they love equations, formulas and proved theorems. If you don't believe me, try this: Ask an engineer for help with a simple math or physics problem. You will suddenly see the guy's mood become brighter as he warms up to the challenge and jumps right into the problem (This is how geeks reminisce about college -- Instead of fraternities/parties/spring breaks.) The final answer would consist of some extremely advanced formula or theorem that you've never heard of before and you end up being more confused about the subject than before. (And this is how they show off ... lol)

Unfortunately, there aren't any formulas to help us out in real life (e.g social situations) BUT I attended a seminar last week in school in which we discussed a couple of frameworks to deal with a few particular situations at work.

The following information will be not new to you. In fact, we all do this unconsciously in our mind, but I thought it was cool to have it written down as a framework.

For example, when dealing with an issue at work/writing emails use the following framework :
What is the issue?
So What impact does it have?
Now What can you do?
Who needs to be involved?
What are the First Steps needed?


A safe way to provide feedback to a friend/colleague/team member:
When you describe behavior the impact on me/group is ____ .
I feel Describe a feeling (Cannot start with 'that')
What I need from you is Result

Clear mis-understanding:
I assumed _______ because of ________.

Never use the following phrases :
Get over it.
You shouldn't feel like that.
Don't take it personally.
What ever !!

And if you're wondering that title of this post meant:
D x V x FS > R
Dissatisfaction x Vision x First Steps > Resistance

The declining cost of communication ..

Technology has been known to drive costs down and increase efficiency. You see it everywhere from hi-tech machinery in huge manufacturing plants to simple technology in your home/office. But there's one area where you could argue that the declining cost has actually made it more inefficient. I'm talking about the cost of communication. Now, dont' get me wrong, I really think that cell phones, email, fax etc help us work and live more efficiently.

But I'm pointing more towards the social aspect of communication. Usually the cost of communicating to somebody is a signal of how important you consider that dialog to be. For example, There is a difference between taking out time to go to a friend's house to say hi, compared to writing a two liner comment on somebody's myspace/facebook profile. Now it might seem that I'm comparing apples with oranges, but lets look at how most teenagers and a lot of people in their twenties are managing their social network.

I keep in touch with my 100+ friends using facebook. 60% of the people are those that I haven't talked offline in years. 30% of them are people that I barely know and have met only a couple of times. But I usually never forget to wish them on their birthdays because facebook conveniently reminds me on the right day. And all I have to do is put in a quick 'Happy Birthday' on their profile and Im done. I find out about their graduations, weddings, kids being born .... all right away and I get to congratulate them by putting comments on their pictures or posts on their profile. If I feel like I haven't talked to somebody in a while, I feel obligated to send them a short 'Whats up' message every couple of months and they reply back with an equally obligatory reply which doesn't say much but satisfies the requirement that we keep in touch. So in effect I communicate with my close friends/family in the exact same way that I communicate with friends I barely know. I can post about all the drama in my life on my blog instead of discussing it in person with my closest friends/family.

You see where I'm going with this? If you take away this whole social networks/IM thing, I would be forced to narrow my close friends/colleagues circle to about 20-30 people and actually meet them or talk to them on the phone more often. The socialization would be real (and not fake), deeper and more healthy. The fact that technology has made it so easy to communicate, it's becoming harder to express the effort or thought that you've put into that particular dialog.

I guess these are some of the negative side effects of making it so easy to communicate with the rest of the world. Now I've seriously thought about quiting facebook (because it can get addicting) but then I dont do it because I dont want to be out of touch with about half of my family/friends who live on the other side of the world. Plus, I need to something to do to waste time while I'm at work .. right? :P

Feeling Benevolent ?

So lets say you came up with this great business idea that was pretty low risk and required very little investment. To add a twist to it, lets assume that you're a poor widow and have 3 little kids to take care of and live in a small rented place in a third world country.

Now, I might have gone overboard to paint that picture, but that is usually the profile of most borrowers at http://www.Kiva.org It's just a brilliant idea where Kiva is using the global reach of the internet to make short term loans to people like those. The incredible thing is that out of the $2.3 million that they've loaned out, they have had a 99.80% recovery rate. Try comparing that to the bad debt provision of your local credit union who loans out money to huge corporations ?!?!?

So check it out, you can loan as little as $25 and you can choose the business/entrepreneur you like. And you get your money back within 12-24 months. Now you can touch the lives of real people who need help with a few clicks of your mouse

Cheers :)

Things to do: Buy a drum set!

So ... I realized that with a full time job, grad school in the evenings, working on some side projects like pkstudent.com and Webcentric Solutions -- I needed something else to consume my almost non-existent free time.

I WANT TO BUY A DRUM SET !!!!

People who know me will be rolling their eyes at this moment .. but I don't really care ... because you all will be scrambling for seats when me and my future local band will be playing a gig at a local amphitheater under the stars !!!! lol .. (See .. I'm not even dreaming BIG this time .. all I need is a LOCAL band and a small gig at a LOCAL amphitheater with an audience of a couple of hundred) Is that so hard to give GOD ?!?!?

A couple of issues here:

• Do I want to spend several hundred dollars on something that I might never learn to play?
• Are you even allowed to have a drum in an apartment?
• Do I even have a knack for drum beats?

So while I ponder about those things ... Lets just enjoy this short video :

Word of the day: 'Nuclear Family'

NEW DELHI: Indians who neglect their aging parents could be jailed under a new law passed by parliament Thursday ... Elderly people are increasingly being regarded in India as a burden as nuclear families become the norm against the backdrop of rapid economic development that is fast breaking down traditions. .. more

I heard about this on the radio this morning (And yeah .. you can call me a FOB but I do listen to the desi radio station in the car sometimes -- they usually have good music on there ;)

Anyway .. I started thinking about how Pakistan is always trailing behind India by a few years. A lot of social and cultural changes that happened in India a few years ago are now slowly appearing in Pakistan. So I wonder how soon will we be seeing similar laws about neglecting parents coming to our country. Although I doubt such a law could be effectively implemented in any country.

Unfortunately, these 'nuclear families' are gradually gaining ground even in Pakistan. I guess it's the price one has to pay for 'modernization'. I'm not sure where I'm trying to go with this post ... but I just get ticked off when I see people not providing their parents with an adequate living while they themselves live a much luxurious life. It just doesn't seem right!

A stroke of luck ....

So lets assume that there's a really important event/task coming up that you're trying to prepare for. It could be anything from a big exam or an interview for a position that you really really want or maybe a big project.

And you're freaking out, because this is important to you and you're working hard to prepare for it. And then comes this person who's really important in your life, somebody you look up to and have always tried to win their approval ever since you were a kid. And this person tries to placate you by saying ... 'Oh don't worry, it's going to be okay because your luck has just been phenomenal in the last few years so you're bound to get it right'

Luck??

You feel like somebody just punched you in the stomach .... You couldn't believe that he just associated everything that you have achieved in your life, all the hard work that you've done to just pure LUCK!! You don't say anything to him, but still feel a little sad about not getting recognition for all that you've done to even get to this point since, according to him, it was just all luck.

After a few hours roll by, you still have all that stuff going on in your head, but now you're not angry anymore and you start thinking about some of your family/friends/acquaintances who were about the same age as you. When growing up they were subjected to the same harsh realities of life as you ... but unfortunately they are not doing as well as you are today. Were they not as hard working as you? They probably were. Some of them even more smarter than you. So how come you got to be where you are right now and not them??

And then it hits you !!! You were lucky!! You think of all the times in your life when you thought that your life was ruined and there was no way you could get out of that mess .. but somehow it would all work out in the end and you would congratulate yourself for a job well done ... You realize that hard work is absolutely necessary but there are a lot of things that are out of your control and we should be thankful to God for all that he has given us. And you can never thank him enough for what all you have.

At that point your mind just gets boggled at the fact that you used to think of yourself as some hot-shot SOB only a few hours ago and now trembling with fear at the realization that you don't control anything, instead it's all because of Allah's will and our parents' duas which we sometimes refer to as luck.

"Moving back to Pakistan"

I came across this article called 'Returning to Pakistan' by Nouman Sheikh who recently went back to Pakistan after living in the US for ten years.
Since I have been thinking about moving back for quite some time now .. I found this pretty interesting and decided to blog about it. It seems to portray a pretty realistic picture of the whole moving back issue.

".... Moving to North America from Pakistan has always held a degree of prestige for Pakistani professionals. The educational, training and research institutions in public and private sectors always presented a great opportunity for ambitious men and women from Pakistan to get US qualification and further their careers and intellect. The late nineties saw a huge outflow of qualified professionals from Pakistan in engineering, computer science and medicine to better futures in America. This generation of professionals was much different from the previous ones who had typically arrived as students and worked hard to pay for their tuition and living. Most came from the Pakistani middle class, they were in USA legally, had secured jobs, and they were respected and appreciated by the US companies as employees or as contractors. Over the last 10 years, a lot of these professionals have done well professionally, financially and intellectually.

Returning to Pakistan is one of the favorite topics of discussion for this generation of well
settled people in America in their social circles. Desi gatherings always had discussions around visas, layoffs, green cards and job opportunities in the early 2000s. That has been replaced with raising kids, social and political dynamics of two worlds and an overall search for a sense of purpose. This is exactly according to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where I believe this generation of professionals is now heading into the self actualization phase. Another very interesting trait common to this group is family structure. Most of the siblings are already in North America through their support and they have parents who are now getting old and in need of being looked after. I belong to this group and have come across a lot of people on different online forums run by expatriates or in social circles of Chicago, who fall in this category. It includes IT professionals, engineers, scientists and doctors with some very successful and accomplished ones. The two major reasons I hear most often are:
• Parents back home are growing old
• Kids are growing up in USA not exactly to parents’ vision

There are other reasons like taking over a family business, getting married, not enjoying life in USA, want to help the homeland, etc. All of these are reasons of people who have otherwise no legal or financial compulsion to leave USA; they are the ones who want to make a conscious decision by themselves to move back.

This group is an asset to their country and the reverse brain drain can help Pakistan by leaps and bound in developing the required and critically missing middle management and specialization in all industries. This article presents a simple scorecard to help decide if you want to move to Pakistan and then carries into opportunities and challenges. The article concludes with my personal story, the move and settling down in Pakistan, just so you can relate your own overall situation to a case study.


Moving Back Scorecard

In order for these people to move back, there are always grave concerns about life in Pakistan for themselves and their immediate family. Things related to healthcare and security are usually on top of their lists while source of income is next. Factoring in these issues in the overall logistics of the move, along with the daily exhaustive routine of life in USA prohibits most people from reaching a conclusion and time just passes by with their feet ingrained in American soil deeper and deeper at the passing of each day. I have spent my years in USA dealing with these issues on a day in day out basis and perhaps know most flavors of all issues that overwhelm the mind when it comes to “Returning to Pakistan”.

I have been able to devise a simple 4 step test to see if you should return or not. This 4 step test is described below:

Step 1: Social
Step 2: Financial
Step 3: Professional
Step 4: Environmental

..... and then he goes on describing how this 4 Step test works ... if you're interested, here's the full article.

Sense of Purpose

The people, the primary audience of this article, typically think about a sense of purpose when life starts to settle down for them in America. I have found that stage to arrive somewhere mid to late 30s. You are happily married with a loving wife and healthy kids, you make a decent living and you live in a nice suburb in a nice house with 4 bedrooms and a 2 car garage. Life sometimes seems to come to a stand still and you look around for what to do next. For people who have entered a stage in their life where they have started pondering these questions, is that it? Am I done achieving things? Is it going to be the same business as usual from this point on? There is a tremendous sense of purpose in Pakistan. From earning honest money to teaching your kids proper manners and from taking up a cause of healthcare or distribution of justice, you can come back to Pakistan and feel alive. There are problems all over the place and hardly anyone seems to mind. From the poor quality of service at restaurants and upscale stores to a blatant abuse of power and status by the rich and powerful, all areas can use some help. The system of life in Pakistan is not easy and a sole family or individual cannot fight it on his own either. A group mentality and of like minded approach to basic lifestyle coming from people who have moved from abroad need to join hands and get together in this fight. Rest assured, I am not recommending everyone to take up social work but do whatever you want to do for a living in Pakistan with a sense that you need to help these people by setting an example. Things as simple as saying thank you to a peon or guard in an office building is enough once a day to make a difference even for those who are not crusaders fighting for their beliefs. Honesty, integrity, courtesy and respect for a human being regardless of his social status are simple things which this society is losing very fast. The good things we have learnt from the North American continent have to be instilled in the local populace slowly and gradually. My daughter, in grade 3, writing an essay on “what would I do if I had a million rupees” ended up suggesting building better schools and museums in Karachi as she found these 2 things wanting compared with Chicago. We were called up by the teacher and the principal to understand how we have taught this to our daughter especially since we have just moved from USA. I firmly believe that simple examples of things done right will make the people around us realize and open their eyes to alternative approaches in life. The youth need this more than the adults as they are losing a sense of ambition. Their focus is on securing financial freedom so they can get nicer cars, look prettier and wear designer clothes. Youth from all classes of society are falling for this probably due to the onslaught of media and uncontrolled internet access. Hard work, patience and perseverance is losing its charm and it needs to be inculcated by demonstrating first hand how it is done. I believe the expatriate community in North America has a very important role to fill this widening gap between what is being done and what should be done.

For the rest of the article click here.

Random

Iftar dinner parties can become quite a dilemma sometimes.
For example, this one iftar party that I went to last weekend, there were a lot of things at the dinner table. Plus we were given a 5 compartment paper plate to put our food in.

So when you haven't eaten anything all day and when you're holding that paper plate waiting for your turn at the serving table. It was pretty hard not to start thinking about how to strategically fill your plate so that you don't miss anything.
It's just funny how my brain was working in overdrive just to do a simple thing like filling a dinner plate.
Here's what I finally decided was the optimum configuration:


Note: If you're fasting and if your mouth watered by just looking at that picture of the plate please don't blame me. I'm just trying to document my life experiences here. lol

hey .. where's my template !!!

Is it another one of blogger.com's tactics to make me switch over to their rather boring templates? Whats the fun in having all ready out of the box templates when you can't tinker around with raw html code??? :p

But I'm not going down without a fight .. I'm going to set up a new template .. soon ... I'm just feeling too lazy right now to expend all that effort into creating a new design for the blog!!!!!!!!!!