Singapore

The view from my terrace …LOL (not).

A boulevard in Singapore

Skyscrapers in Singapore

My friend sent in these pics. A photographic description of Singapore by him.

The Day the Earthquake hit Pakistan!

A lot has happened in last 25 days and I haven’t been able to jot down the details of what exactly had happened. The quake turned our world upside down, changed our geography and left deep scars on the hearts and minds of the surviving souls.

The worst thing ever happened to Pakistan or to the world. We were still gaping at the horrendous pictures painted by Katrina and Rita and last year by tsunami, now this disaster has added more. Such unprecedented calamities make us realize that how helpless and immortal we humans are. With all our resources and technology, we are still vulnerable to natural catastrophes. We know everything yet we can do nothing. All our risk management techniques fail when it comes to such calamities. That’s why they say Man proposes but God disposes. Just like ants that can be crushed with our fingers, that’s what we are to God.

Earthquake Appeal

An email I got which I am posting here. Please do click to donate.

Just click n Donate...:)

Visit the page below and click the appropriate link,

You will have just raised 10p / 17c for the Pakistan

Earthquake Appeal

No payment required from u!

Link: http://simplyislam.com/clickforcharity.asp

As time flies by…

It’s September. A month has passed. O’ man! Time has wings! I haven’t updated this thing for quite a while. Every time I think of writing, one thing or other comes up.

Today was a fucked up day…. nothing happened, well nothing I want to share with the public anyway. Some things are just too private to share in a blog so I’ll write about various junks that have swirled around inside my head for the last couple of days.

· August had been a wonderful month. I never had more fun or felt better. My Birthday, oh! What a remarkable day to reminisce! I owe Nidzz for making it special. She is really a dudette!!!

· The final year project committee was impressed by the progress report of my project. Somehow, it turned to be much better than other people’s. It cost me three sleepless nights. I still have to get comments from my project supervisor, as he was outta city then. I have collected data of share price of KSE-100 index for one fiscal year. That was quite a job!!! Next step is the analysis of these share prices. Things are finally on the move.

· I screwed up financial managements’ quiz yesterday. I didn’t study at all; rather I watched movie A Beautiful Mind at cable. What an amazing movie that was! After watching movie, I didn’t feel like studying so just went through the lectures at night. The quiz was quite tough, even those who studied all day long couldn’t do better so, from this experience I learned: Don’t Study! LOL!

· I still got to prepare questions for ACM’s Proquest but Sana keeps on forgetting to bring my compiler copy. ProQuest ’05 is coming up in the mid of September. Bushra is working really hard these days. ACM CS-KU chapter has gained reputation in her leadership. Being a president is not easy. She has faced a lot of criticism but she goes on with devil-may-care attitude. Recently, Wajiha blamed her for not giving importance to ACM members. I wonder how she could say that. She never attended any meeting and yet wanted to be kept informed personally by the president. DUH!!! I think Wajiha desperately needs attention, which her boyfriend has failed to provide. Some boyfriend! ;)

· Mr. Shahid Qureshi is the best professor in the whole campus. He has got style and charisma. Just attend his one lecture and you will fall in love with him! Trust me ;)… Everybody enjoys his lectures. Though, his manner of stating truth bluntly, makes him sound cynical at times, but that’s what students like about him. Nobody wants to hear that everything is okay when actually it’s NOT! Prof. Qureshi loves mathematics like anything and because of him I have started loving math. He offered some projects related to CLA (computational linear algebra) and motivated us to work on them. I have decided to study discrete dynamic systems (fractals) but I don’t think I’ll be able to develop an application. I often need motivation & inspiration to do something. Zaiggy gave me motive to work up fractals. I had made up my mind to apply fractal theory to stock prices of KSE-100 index but then, I couldn’t get much help mainly because so far, this fractal theory is more a hypothesis than a practical matter. Besides, it would require a lot of effort and time from different teachers and believe me, it’s really hard to trace teachers. So, in the end, upon the advice of Professor Meenai of stats faculty, I chose time series analysis of stock prices of KSE. I started off with fractals and ended up at time series analysis. Now, I understand why they say that you should always aim for stars. Had it not been fractals (or Zaiggy :p), I wouldn’t have thought about this time series thingy.

· Ms. Sadaf Alvi is the only female I like at campus; the second best teacher at our department. Of course, first is Prof. Qureshi. Ma’am Sadaf is very easy going and casual. We got along quite well last semester and that caused a bit of controversy too, but things are fine now. I became her fan from the day I got to know her. She loves teaching and does it very honestly. You can ask her for anything; anytime; and she’ll help you out. She gets so friendly that you won’t feel like that you are talking to a teacher. Whenever I need an advice, I consult her because she always speaks her mind. One more thing, she got this amazing power of reading people’s minds so don’t ever think of lying to her.

· I have decided to start writing again. I haven’t come up with a single verse since long. I don’t know why I haven’t…just kinda lazy I guess. I have to write couple of articles for ACM’s magazine as well. What lazybones they got in editorial board! To be honest, writing takes a lot of me mentally and I am usually a little tired after writing for an hour. For poetry, I always need inspiration and because of this, I have a very few collection of my poems. See, things don’t inspire me much! ;)… And as for people, ah! They make me wonder, seriously!!!

Yuna

Yuna- A symbol of Innocence, Beauty & Femininity!

The heroine of Final Fantasy X. Her face bears innocence of child, delicacy of female and a grace of leader.

My sis’ friend made a video of this game while playing. I took this picture from that video. Man! What a beautiful product of someone's imagination!

By the way, the video is amazing. I keep watching it again and again though I remember how much I cried in the end, when I watched it first time. Oh, what a heart-breaking end that was. Sniff!! Sniff!! :’( …A cri de coeur!!!

I was busy in getting printouts of my document when phone buzzed. It was unusual for it to ring at 2:00 AM. Considering that it could be my sister’s friend, I picked up and a male voice answered. The person told me that he had this number saved in his cell phone for long, so he decided to check it. Worst of all, the number was saved with my name!

Lost and confused (as usual), I remained silent for the next couple of seconds but then, that person asked few questions. After realizing that he was a complete stranger, I told him that this could be some co-incidence and was about to hung up on him when he asked me to be his friend. DUH!!! He sounded not more than a collegian. Upon my refusal, he implied that he would call again. Man! He had the nerve! And at that moment, he was getting on my nerves but I kept my temper cool and tried to convince him. After few futile efforts I put the receiver back!

I shut my printer off and started writing this blog. As for printouts, well, I will do it tomorrow because I am totally sicken by that person’s attitude right now. He called again, few minutes ago. Seeing his number on CLI, I asked my sis to pick up the phone and as expected, he didn’t answer. LOSER!!! I hate to be disturbed by people like him especially, when I am doing some important work.

My day was full of activities, as usual. Woke up early, helped mom in kitchen, then started studying. Progress Report of my project for the month of August is due next week. Whole day, I was thinking what to present in the report. I have gathered the required data and now, have to carry out the analysis. Only got one week and I am completely at a loss to schedule my work.

Chapter 1 of Forecasting Principles has been done and I have got to complete Chapter 3 by tomorrow anyway. I had planned to start reading it today but thanks to annoying callers like mentioned before, I had to postpone it. I wonder how people take things as they come; it’s impossible!!!

Things to do tomorrow: -

• Complete Chapter 3 of Forecasting Principles.
• Make draft of Project Progress Report (including some key phases of project to be entered in Gantt Chart later).

Had an amazing day at campus but busy as well... oh! this final year project is really tiring!!! I hope it turns out well in the end ... I don't know why I always go for challenging tasks. Anyways, the more I study, the more I find it interesting.

Attended a career counselling session conducted by acm cs-ku. It was superb...everything was done in a professional way. The IT people ... man! I was impressed! Though I wanted to be photographed while listening to counsellor ...LOL! but neva mind. It was a one-to-one counselling and after meeting with the counsellor, I felt relief ... all my concerns about scope of research projects were gone after discussion with Mr. Humayun, the counselling expert. The students especially freshies were pretty excited and were waiting eagerly for their turns.
The campus was buzzing with activities till 5:00 PM. I left campus an hour before .... was already feeling tired after the classes and all.

I am an August Baby!

The History of August

After Julius Caesar was killed, his nephew Augustus took over. Since July had been for Julius Caesar, Augustus thought he should get some token month too.
Thus the Roman senate lengthened the month to 31 days by taking a day from February.

Some interesting facts about the month of August I found at orkut:

Ø An oracle of prosperity is ascribed to August and fortunetellers deem it a lucky charm with which to transfer house, march down the aisle, seal contracts and sink the cornerstone.

Ø August was originally called Sextillis by the Romans, meaning sixth.

Ø Anglo-Saxons termed august "arn-monath"... arn, meaning harvest month. It was also called scere-monath because sheep (scere) were abundant that time of year, and weod-monath because weeds were plentiful too.

Ø In east Africa, Masai call August the "time of brown grass".

Ø In Bengali ... first half of august is called "sraban" ... which signifies rain.... and the last half is called "bhadro”… which signifies autumn ... clear sky with white clouds.