Nooo Don't tell mee !!!!!

Okay, so I haven't read the Harry Potter and the deathly hallows yet. With my trip to Pakistan less than 10 days away, along with the last weeks of school and working on that e-commerce project I just dont have 10-12 hours to put into that book.
But it's so hard trying to NOT find out what happens in the end of the book. A lot of my cousins and both of my sisters have read the book and they're constantly threatening me about telling me who dies in the end !!!!!

And a couple of days ago, I was reading a random blog and some wise guy had left a comment there saying that 'Harry Potter dies in the end' --- I figured that it wasn't a credible source and decided to ignore it.
Then yesterday, a friend of mine signs into Msn Messnger and his screen name said 'Yayy .. Harry Potter didn't die'

And I was happy to see that .. now I've got two spoilers saying different things.

Lets see if I can hold on for another 9 days until I get on the plane for Karachi because thats when I plan to start reading it.

Longest three hours - ever!

Introductions:
Mr. James Kindley:
Marketing Professor at the business school here at SMU. His method of instruction is completely case study based, and he prefers to call people by their last name. During class, he calls up on people (by their last name of course) and badgers them with questions until he's got them stammering trying to answer his latest un-answerable question.

Me:
Since I'm from an engineering background, I've been primarily used to teachers who just walk into the classroom and start yapping about yet another boring algorithm or the pecularities of computer hardware. That would normally give us a whole 2 hours to chat online with friends or search various P2P portals to find a pirated copy of whatever new software we were fascinated with at that time.
After joining business school, when I came up against Mr. Kindley's style of teaching I felt like somebody was intruding on my personal space. So, I resorted to doing a lot of preparation of the case before each class so that I wouldn't be speech struck when I was called upon to answer some questions.

Monday, July 23rd 2007. 5:59 PM - Advanced Marketing Class

I arrived just in time for the class and Mr. Kindley started firing away questions at a guy sitting 2 seats across mine. I felt pretty confident because I had read that day's case pretty thoroughly, but as I listened to the questions and answers going across, I realized that I didnt recognize any of the stuff they were talking about. As I looked around, nobody else was looking around horror struck and wide eyed like me. I looked in my bag for a copy of the syllabus and when I pulled it out, I found out that I had read the case for the next week's class.
As small drops of perspiration appeared on my forehead, I decided to rough it out and try and not to get attention drawn towards me. I knew if I were called upon by Mr. Kindley, I would have to confess about my mistake and he would never let me hear the end of it. Not to mention that he would just think that I was lying. And since class participation was 70% of the grade, I couldnt risk him having that impression of me. I took notes furiously (just so that I would look busy) and tried not to make eye contact with him. I even laughed heartily at his lame jokes to stay inconspicuous. And it was really hard to resist looking at the wall clock every 5 minutes because I knew he'd see me looking and point his finger at me and say in his booming voice ... "And Mr. Godil ... what did you come up for the value of lost sales blah blah blah ....... "

At the end of the two hours, we finished that case and he hadn't called on me. He gave us a break for 10 minutes and I celebrated my close call by treating myself to a snickers bar. The lecture after the break was alway a wrap-up speech by Mr. Kindley so I knew I could relax. But to my amazement, he started talking about ANOTHER case and everybody was prepared for it. I just couldn't believe it! We had never done 2 cases in one class before. So, there I went again, trying to lay low while pretending to pay attention. I had a pretty close call when he suddenly pointed right at me, but called the name of the guy sitting behind me.

At the end of three hours I walked back to my car emotionally and mentally exhausted. And I thought it would be fun to share this joy ride with you guys because I know a couple of my friends have been thinking about joining business school in the future.
Lesson Learned: 'ALWAYS READ THE COURSE SYLLABUS CAREFULLY' !!!!!

Dreaming with eyes open?

You know what my problem is? I've got a pretty wild imagination. And that, in turn fosters some really foolish expectations & ideas. And that, in turn leads to being let down occasionally because those expectations/ideas were somewhat unrealistic right from the start.

So, if I know what the problem is ... I can easily go and fix it right?
No -- I don't want to!! I don't think my ideas are totally crazy or that I'm overly naive. Granted that I still sometimes fail to recognize the bad intentions of some people ahead of time, but I'm afraid to become one of those people who question every action of every person they meet or talk to. Once you start doing that, it's really hard to set the boundaries about who to believe. A cynic is something that I don't want to be .. ever.

There's a running joke in our family that we men in the Godil (My last name) family can take a seemingly small idea and run with it in our minds to create a full blown possible scenario that could span up to several decades and explore every little nook and cranny of that idea. This could last anywhere from a couple of hours to several days. During this time our minds would be churning continuously still trying to decode the idea until we either get tired of it or actually do some real work towards that idea.

I'm currently living in that self induced high that has now lasted for more than three weeks (with it's usual up and downs) .. In the last 3 weeks, I've started a software development company by the name 'WebCentric Solutions' with a really good friend of mine. I'll do a separate post on it sometime later.
WebCentric Solutions' first major project is going to be on online market place in Pakistan. It's about time we made common Pakistani people get comfortable with online shopping. We plan to launch Pakistan's biggest online shopping site and make it easy for every Asim, Ahmed and Saleem (Tom, Dick and Harry :p) to go online and buy and sell stuff.
There's a huge amount of details to worry about and we've been working day and night trying to address them one by one. It's all I can think of every waking minute. But it's sooo0o much fun and I wouldn't want to trade this for anything else. It's going to be bigger than anything I've done before.
So please pray for us that we can pull this off.

Adios

Arfeen

Please take this survey if

you live in Pakistan or have lived there at some time or even if you've been there a couple of times only. (Just make sure you put your current city or state or country in one of the boxes in the survey)

Im trying to collect some data for a project and I thought I'd put this blog of mine to some use ....

Its a pretty short survey.. only 13 questions and they're all multiple choice...

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=lUKDhOXFJBVVETaEuz3Kcg_3d_3d

Thanks for your help.
Arfeen

Memoirs from my trip to Canada

I had some personal stuff to take care of in Montreal on Tuesday and I figured that if I'm spending all that money on the plane ticket, I might as well see a little bit of Canada too. So, after spending 2 days in Montreal, I drove off to Toronto for 2 days and then came back to Montreal for my flight back to Dallas.

Following are some of the interesting things that happened to me there:

-- I don't know if this is true for most people, but I love going to places where they speak a foreign language (or at least have an interesting accent) French was the first language in Montreal but they all spoke English too, so I didn't get a chance to show off my non-existent French speaking capabilities. The following conversation took place at a Tim Horton's drivethru somewhere outside of Montreal:

Speaker: xxxxxxxx Something in French xxxxxxx
me: Hi, do you speak English?
Speaker: Yes, I do (in heavily accented english)
me: proceeded to place my order in english.

For some reason, that was fun. I felt like I really was in some foreign country :p

-- I've finally decided that I will never go visit a new city/country alone again. Especially if it involves a six hour road trip (Each way)

-- Speaking of road trips, I never thought that American light rock music could feel so comforting. After driving for almost 6 hours (I was bored out of my mind) and with one more hour to go, I was fiddling around with the radio to find something to listen to, I came across this light rock music station. Let me tell you, if you're in a foreign country (even if it's only Canada) and feeling kinda homesick ... listen to music that you can somehow associate with home and you'll feel a lot better.

-- Oh and during the long drives I came up with various stuff to entertain myself (wait !!!! .... oh come on .. it's not what you're thinking .. lol)

Note: These antics were designed for a 2 lane freeway, but can be improvised for other freeways too ;)

1) Do you ever get annoyed when you're driving in the left lane (the faster one), going well over the speed limit and some wise guy thinks that you're still going too slow and begins to tailgate you? Well ... you can either move over to the right lane (which is somewhat boring) or you can choose the more exciting option. Just push the button to spray the windshield fluid on your windshield. Keep it pressed until you either run out of water or see the person behind you turn on his wipers to wipe off your water from his windshield. Then just move over to the right lane and let him pass and smile when he gives you a dirty look.

2) Find somebody who's going about the same speed as you are and then wait for the car to get into the right lane. And then pull up right next to that car in left lane and drive at the exact same speed as the other car. If the other car slows down, you slow down and vice versa. Believe me .. it's great for passing time.

3) Try and convince yourself that it's okay to feel a tad bit sad/disappointed when an unknown car driven by an unknown person, who you've been driving alongside for the last 300 km suddenly takes an exit, leaving you alone for the rest of the drive.

3) If you're going at 120 km/hr (20 km/hr over the limit) and you pass a cop writing out a ticket to somebody about every 45 minutes and on average a car passes you at a higher speed every 5 minutes. What is the probability of you coming across a cop who's free and sitting there with his speed gun trained on the freeway? I really had to resist the urge to pull out my calculator and calculate it.... hehe. (I had vowed to myseelf that I would never calculate another probability after my last statistics course)

Disclaimer: The above mentioned antics could have serious consequences ... not just limited to various offensive hand gestures from the affronted parties :p

Finding that perfect swing !

The first hole was par 4.
I raised my driver and brought it down in a perfect swing and watched the ball fly up in the air and land 200 yards away right on the fairway.
I rush of emotions went by which ranged from relief that I didn't make a fool of myself, to disbelief that my first shot was so perfectly on the spot.

That was the first shot of the first ever real golf game that I played. I had started learning how to play a few months ago, and had played at various driving ranges and small 9 hole practice courses. But last Wednesday, I went in to play at a real golf course with a couple of friends & colleagues. And I actually did well ...

I finished the first hole at par !!!!!!!
Although I admit, there were a couple of holes in which I was hitting the ball from the trees in one side of the fairway to the trees/shrubs in the other side.


And I lost only two balls (which is an amazing feat by itself) ... one in the water, and the other in the trees


But it was sooo much fun ... I'm completely hooked up on this game now. Every now and then I find myself checking the weather for the weekend to see if it's going to rain or not.

And I dont care if people say that it's a boring game or only old retired people play it (which is not true .. I see a lot of young men and women playing .. even kids!)

Here's the score card of the first 9 holes from the game ... I figured I would want to have a memory of my first game ever.
Also .. note that my score wasn't that bad compared to the other people I was playing with (Who have been playing for years - except for Sabir)

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.

My Latest Crush !!!!

I really really really want this !!!!!!
Apple unvieled their new iPhone at the Macworld 2007. And it looks amazing. It should be out in June for a hefty price of $500 if u get the 4GB one or $600 for the 8GB.
Watch Steve Jobs keynote @ http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/showtime06/

The new cleaning lady & the poor kid

Our new cleaning lady is awesome (she even speaks english!) ... The only time I had seen our apartment that clean was when the leasing office guy showed it to us for the first time a few months ago. She said that she'd come every friday to make sure that the apartment stays sparkling clean. And to top it off, she actually enjoys cleaning. I mean, look at the picture; Have you seen anybody looking so happy while vacuming? lol

But unfortunately, it was too good to be true. The next friday came and went, and the apartment got dirtier and dirtier... and then the next friday ... and the next one ....

Oh and another cute picture of this little kid who seems to be really tired of having carted around by his mom in shopping malls. And that doesnt seem like to be a very comfortable position to sleep in either.

btw, I was just joking about the cleaning lady. Thats our friend Dana who actually helped us clean our apartment once and got mad that we messed it up in just a few days after she cleaned it ;)