A quick fix for this situation is to open the comments page in another window/tab (as your browser permits), and then removing the {http://www.inblogs.net/files.php?file=} prefix from the address bar…..leaving only {http://blogger.com} (and so on…) there.

That way you can open the comment page.

Comment away!

I also faced a 2
week wordpress blackout.

Chances are, you
might very soon see me on a completely different blog with a unique URL to end
all issues once and for all.

Till then, take care
and have fun…..

From innocent hues of black to the blazing darkness of clean white.

Everything barren, seemingly clean, hiding oceans of ferociously tamed expressions.

Revolving, in a dervish-esque trance, about the same sacred stone, each time, a new wave of trance, each step, closer to losing oneself. To lose oneself in pursuit of one’s dreams and ideas is a dilemma in its own case. Lose yourself, as not to lose your sanity, lose yourself, to escape from everything else and rise to a state of enigmatic consciousness.

Busy week…well, sort of. Wrapping up stage 1, stage 2 lies in wait.

Thankfully Ideas has ended, and traffic around the city is now more easy to go by. What beats me is why there are benches on the PAF museum side of Shahrah e Faisal? Who walks that stretch? Ok fine, the fixed and cleaned up that area for the first time in my almost 2.5 year history of driving through that road, but benches are beyond me!

Today is relaxed…have a meeting at about noon to put finishing touches on the masterpiece. Lets see what finally turns out and when we are actually able to get things moving. Fingers crossed. Need lots of prayers and wishes.

After a long long period of being good aquaintences, I met N recently, and we take the opportunity to yak each others heads off pointlessly every once in a while. We’ve known each other silently for approximately 3 years now, and its always been warm, comforting and peaceful. Now its anything but peaceful, but in the fun sense totally! Its intriguing as to how we as people allow certain relationships to cross cerrain safety barriers over periods of time, making acquaintences, friends and a lot more in the process.

Moving on, things are looking interestingly busy on multiple fronts, lets see what happens in due course of time. Winter has started creeping in, one can actually move around town without getting drenched. The light nip in the air at night, the slight dryness, feels just great.

What else did I make a point to blog about…?

Yeah, attended a seminar yesterday titled “Y is for Youth”, aimed at marketing to the youth, and came back with a head ache. It was probably the worst event ive everseen done by the Dawn group!

Best part about yesterday though was the part about me driving home at night. The roads had very light traffic at about 8.30 pm! I managed to breeze home and in the process I almost believed it was past 11!

The drive to work this morning too, was fairly comfortable as compared to normal days. I guess the citzens of this city are freaked out by potential traffic jam threats!

Some live the dream, some live to build the dream, and are satisfied in doing so, knowing the dire circumstances that one may face in the process and knowing that many mountains lay ahead,

I was discussing an opportunity with a friend, who asked if I thought I could do the task. I inadvertently blurted out “If I could do it, I would not do it”. A couple of moments silence followed, then after realizing what I had said and the liberation that I felt after saying it, I went on to explain the statement further. Bottom line being, if I knew how to to accomplish a certain task, it would hardly be a challenge. It is the search of the ultimate quest that keeps me going.

The past few days, I have been positioned (by some random reason) to contemplate on the beauty of this one word. Challenge. In our lives, everything is a challenge, to someone or the other, in some form or the other. Why do challenges appeal to us so much? Why is it beautiful to challenge the possible?

I believe in everything, for everything is possible…

Things have been pleasantly weird at the home front and work, well, that has been pretty much usual. I guess breakthrough of the week remains a standard feature MashaAllah in which we come to a certain learning and/or crucial opportunity point and move from there.

This week there were two such things. As much as I’d like to, you all know I can’t disclose such wonderfully juicy entreprenurial ideas now, I might to so when things start rolling for real. Possible scenario would be me asking if you had heard of a certain company and/or a certain execution, and if have, I would be telling you who was behind it.

For now though, things will have to wait.

Some strange ideas go into peoples minds when they still believe I do nothing. Smack on November 9th, I bumped into an old ex colleague online and the second and third messages I got from her (first one being “heeeyyyyyy!!!!”) were “aren’t you at offce?” and “what happened to your job??”. I don’t really blame her, she was out of uni for about just over a year when she got married and was (not to be mean) ignorant enough to not think about how things went by aside from her job. She was even least concerned about how other departments functioned. This, was of course an easy opportunity for anyone to tell her more than she knew and also meant that she would get impressed very easily. Turns out the rest of the gang and I keep telling her once she is head over heels “the guy was nothing special, you are just too easy to impress”.

Sounds mean of us, I know, but hey, she was like the lil kid at our place and we all took care of her.

Fast forward to the present, lets see what the coming week has to say…

For now though, I feel a bit lost, for no reason whatsoever….my imagination seems to be on a vacation, and silence seems to prevail all over. Which, i think, is good in a way…no?

We seldom travel alone. Even when we say so and in from the deepest recesses of our heart and mind we feel alone, we are rarely ever never so. There is always someone that walks with anyone and everyone of us, we most often just don’t know.

We look upto people, those we trust, for knowing and holding our hand and walking us to safety. It is an overwhelming opportunity and seemingly a matter of pride, such challenges at times shaking the very foundations of every shred of self confidence when the task is unfolded. No guidance is simple, no suggestion can be steroetyped, no two people and no two scenarios are the same.

When people are looked up to, it is the knowledge and wisdom of such people that comes into question. Professional matters aside, some people have an inherent belief in the ability to fix things and to make them work. Build them for the long journey ahead. Knowledge, ideas and wisdom, are a beautiful symphony spun in the tides of pure inquisition. Some know not, even with years of learning; some know, without opening a single book.

All those who know, by whatever means, thorough courses of eons uncounted, share a common fear (for lack of a lighter word) of the being held responsible, not by people, but by guilt of the self. Things must go on, challenges must be faced, care must be taken, the risks are always there.

When the job is done, the search for the next quest is never too far. Its just a matter of packing up and moving on, back to the deserts, the infinite wilderness, knowing not what lies in wait.

Greek anyone?

Wednesday: The rise of the morning sun, Eid prayers and sending a hefty number of Eid mubarak texts later (I’m not much of an Eid person, but things like these are part of the standard relationship management things), I have breakfast, then laze around the house with one of the younger bros, while other brothers and dad doze off. I go through movies I have, only to discover a couple of them aren’t running on the laptop (dvd player and tv already in use by brother) and I don’t remember what he was watching, but I sure was’nt interested. I managed to watch a horror/thriller movie, See No Evil. Movie was ok, overdone in several aspects. Signed in, goofed around, napped and then went out for dinner.

Thursday: Woke up next morning to a throat that seemed to have been subjected to the free will of over a million pneumatic drill bearing lunatics. Grazed, dented, broken and hurting like mad. Did nothing all day again, this day I took the liberty to sleep a li’l extra. While fooling around online in the evening, set up a dinner plan with a friend, drove out at 8, first found my way there, picked friend up, had dinner at Ciao because Aylanto kicked us out (they had no space, and the head waiter suggested a minimum 30 minute wait. Hot choc at Costa post that (espresso is my first choice, but its too noisy to have a decent discussion at times) and then realized it was 11.30. Had to drop friend to her friend’s place for a slumber party, and slumber-party-hostess’s-mum would have raised eyebrows is she was late. Had a great time though. Headed back home and slept.

Friday: While most of Karachi was out to work, I remained crashed in bed, my throat decided to go gay on me and by now was showing signs of my standard infection cases along with a slight fever. Took meds and cancelled plans of heading out to get some long over due home stuff done. Crashed infront of the telly post lunch and watched an interesting kiddie movie for the second time after quite a while. Also discovered that I like that song by Ali Khan, Saathiya. Friend from Thursday night dinner confirms to me the timing and venue of her brothers concert which she told me of earlier. Its at DD Clifton, reminds me of my crazy donut parties and the need to crash there on Monday morning. As bad as I really wanted to go to this, my drained state was not giving up. Slept like a rock in the evening, woke up for dinner and then answered some interesting questions late at night.

Saturday: Feelin a lot better, I decided to head out to get the stuff finally done. Drove out at 11, came back home at 3, had lunch, then headed back out to drop younger bro to his friend’s place, where he and his friends will be jamming throughout the night. Old school friend called, asking if I was up for a hang-out and dinner plan, knowing I’d start talking like crazy, I chose to decline, in the interest of having a saner throat for Monday morning when I finally get back to work.

Also calculated that after subscribing to the 1250 texts package on October 20, I have less than 720 left, hence over 500 consumed in just 8 days, of which about 240-250 were sent on eid, the rest were cheap text rallies. Saturday’s score was over 30 and continued as I typed this.

All of you jealous of my chutti-at-will attitude: I just downloaded myself an assignment, which I will be doing on Sunday. Zip it already!

This post was prepared on Saturday night, and will be posted Sunday morning, subject to some last minute realizations while I’m sleeping, which will be (hopefully seamlessly) integrated into the main body of the post. Feel free to try locating areas where integration was done later and win yourself brownie points. Do a good job and you might actually even win yourself a real Hob Nob Brownies. Please refer to Mr. Tariq Aziz if you were hoping for a water cooler or Electra for peeling onions/potatoes/whatever.

This post and others like these are the result of extreme boredom that has arisen due to the a sudden gap in all activity thats keeps my life going (read “work’).

It all started on saturday, the day after Juma-tul-Wida (the last friday of the month of Ramadan). I slept late, indulging in an early online sprint that ran late into the night with a couple of blogger (and a few other non blogger friends) and resulted in a late wake up (ok, i realize, 1 pm is late, VERY late, so unlike me).

What did I do after that, roamed around the house for a bit, no one had anything to do, hence I picked up my laptop and ventured to give Maqbool a shot. Its an Indian version of Shakespere’s Macbeth and has been done very well. I have Omkara too, but im kind of not to keen on watching it since I havent studied or seen Othello, the original one. More about books and movies. The Davinci Code makes the movie look like a midget and Tom hanks can go flush himslef down the drain for looking like an absolute baboon in that movie, The producers should have realized that having a blockbuster starcast doesnt essentially guarnatee a great flick, the movie should have its own credibility too. After reading The Davinci Code, I tried giving Deception point a trial. Was sadly disappointed. Too much technological BS and a standard ‘everyone is so smart’ crap. Ticked me off extremely.

Back to my saturday, after Iftar we all sat down and thought about hittin the streets awara gardi-ofying later at night, thought maybe some last minute shopping could get done (none was eid related though, i know, sounds weird). Khair, went out, drove around, traffic was crazy on Tariq road, then hit Alamgir road for Chicken Malai Boti came back at about 2 in the night and almost outside the estate, we heard a huge clanking sound from under the car as we stopped at the signal. Got out, investigated, found a small (2-3 inches) piece of curved metal, which looked like a spring part. Thought would investigate the car later, so while mum was in the car with bro, rest of us walked home. Found out it was the rear right coiled spring that had fractured. Went up, and slept, thanking our lucky stars that the thing didnt break while we were driving around.

Come Sunday, it seemed that the spirit of Garfield had gripped everyone in our home deeply. We all lazed around, slept for quite a while and I didnt even get the car done after taravih, considering the huge traffic jam that would have potentially lied in wait for us.

Monday, woke up at about 11.30, drove out to the mechanics at 12.30, got the stuff done and a couple of other small things too and then came back home at almost 5. Was dead beat by then and skipped a family drive around town later that night post taravih. Went to sleep during a cheap text exchange session and was woken up for sehri, then woke up again this morning and its about 2 pm and im almot done typing this away.

I wont be ranting about the 3 eids we are having her this year, everyone else is doing it and its really not worth it. These people are idiots (ok, ill zip it). Also realized its been a while since Ive done anything on the Metroblogs. Hmm…..