For those who might not know what Ramadan is… it’s a holy Month in the Islamic calendar, during which Muslims all over the world fast.

This holy month is considered to be a blessing upon the Muslims, where the Satan is locked up. Every act of act is blessed with bonuses. Even the very small acts of everyday life are rewarded.

For people who’d like to know more about Ramadan, here’s a wikipedia article.

Fi Amanallah.

On the 23rd of last month (July 2010), me and a couple of my friends (+new friend on the trip) decided that we’re going to hit the Northern areas of Pakistan (read: we wanted to go on vacations).

I’ve added the nicer pictures here but if you want to see all the pictures (minus the ones I didn’t upload), you can easily find them on my Facebook profile, here are the links: Nathiagali, Karachi to Rawalpindi, Abbotabad to Naran, Stuck in Naran, Naran nights & dew, Getting out of the flooded Naran, From Naran to Jheel Saif ul Mulook.

The trip was amazing, not only did we get to see one of the most beautiful sights in Pakistan, we got to experience alot of things first hand which were amazing. Like say we hiked and climbed to Jheel Saif ul Mulook from Naran which is approximately 8km up hill and gets steeper as you go. It took us about 4 hours, and alot of energy and 150 bucks for the horse I took for the last 2 kilometers. Yes I had to use one, I was dehydrated with a bad and empty stomach, not a good combination at all you see.

By the time we got back to Naran the weather had started to shift, it started raining and things took a very steep turn. Talk about landslides, roadblocks.. we were stuck in them. With no way out and low on cash we had to take survival measures, which got us to leave our cosy room and shift to a camp. Nice experience there too. We ended up evacuating those too.. the threat of the area being flooded pushed us to a higher location. So we ended up at Pakistan Tourism Development Centre (PTDC) area. Since one of friends (Fahd) had called up his dad for help, he got a small room arranged for us here at PTDC free of cost (amazing I tell you).

So we shift into our new room, and we have no toilet. Now thats messed up you say.. but wait, by evening one of their officers came by and shifted us to a nicer room, with a good toilet and other facilities, and another bunch of neighbors. This was a good thing incase an emergency broke out. So we’re like chilling and relaxing in the room after carrying our stuff uphill from the camps and we’re watching ‘The A team’ and suddenly we hear loud knocks on our door, turns out we need to report to the reception which is about 500 meters away from our room. Do we carry our stuff, and the guard wasn’t sure so he said no.. (WOW, jacko!) So we report at the camps and they tell us things might turn for the worse and they’re happy we’re safe and at the reception.. but oh! where’s our stuff…? Go get your stuff.. so we hitch hike back 500 meters to our room to get our stuff and come back to the reception, thats roughly 1500 meters in about 20 minutes (Amazing), oh did I mention the route to and from the reception & our room was all mud, dirt and all a very rough route, without any proper pathways.

So finally we’re at the reception all safe and settling in for the night, when we’re told we can go back to our rooms, things are safe. We’re relieved and we head back to our rooms, where we find water flowing into the area our rooms are. We panic a bit and go back to the reception and stay there till about 3 or 4 am. By roughly around 4 am I m like F**k this man, lets go back to the rooms, so we grab our stuff and march back to the rooms, water seems to have found another way and our rooms area is clean. 10 minutes later the guys next door knock and tell us water’s back and the level’s higher. We’re like F**k that we’re sleeping, and we do! 2 hours later the guard’s back to tell us to go back to the reception (OH WOW). Now we’re later given another couple of rooms till we end up in a safer one, during this we ate super less.. We were on a super survival diet and we lost quite some pounds.

When we finally started to get out of Naran, it was almost a 28 hours back to back travelling to Karachi, during which we had only one not so filling meal.

We’re planning K2 base camp next year Inshallah. Let me know if you want to join in.

I went with a few other friends from my Dubai work place, and yeah I knew Riaz from there. So it was me, Tauseef and Shahzeb. The first trip from Karachi to Hyderabad was alright, since we hired a car to drop us there. From there on we called Riaz’s friend in Hyderabad, who picked us from the stop and took us to the Hall. We were among the first to get there, so a long boredom session was in place.. Thank you

Anyways, a little later we started see some familiar faces, that was nice we got to do some catching up with folks from Dubai plus it was a bit of help from the boredom session

Once we were done with food and stuff we headed to the bus stop from where we were called back and were asked to travel with the bride’s family, which was a pretty nice gesture.. 15 minutes into the journey back to Karachi this guy starts talking about god knows what, but what I liked was that when I was playing NFS on my iPhone I was gathering up crowd.. iPhone loves crowd. Then this guys starts to talk about iPhone like he knows the world about it, it was easy to shut him up, which was what I thought an accomplishment, but guess what.. he didn’t shut up.. he started playing “Name Place Animal Thing” on voice with kids on the bus.. I was like “F**K No” what followed was a three hour noisy crappy game.. What we were left was a bad head ache, not to mention a backache from the journey.

I would congratulate Riaz on his wedding, Mubarkaan.. and oh I m not going to attend a wedding in a different city on a bus.. unless it’s a very cool one.

Congrats to you bro.

Cheers.

Hi there folks, I m in a process of rebranding myself (and obviously my work identity Conceptual Konfusion Creative Park). These changes will obviously start to show slowly since I m also occupied with lots of office work, plus I have more activity going on in my life since I moved back to Karachi, PK.

With this change I m trying to convey more openness and boldness in my approach, and the new things I’ve learned over the years. I m certainly more capable now than I was before and I would love to show that with what I do. I m not perfect and no one can be 100% but I sure can try.

You can download my new CV here, or if you’re looking for a printer friendly version, download from here.

Cheers.

I’ve probably have had quite a weekend after quite some time, it just keeps getting better, no kidding and I m loving it.

First I get to meet my friends (Anum, Imran & Haris) over for lunch at Nando’s, where by the way I scored a free meal, ooh that’s an interesting Espetata story, and I realized the kind of an A**hole I am.. So we’re there, and our order’s served, since I got an an Espetata, it came with the huge frame it has, and just as it was served I noticed a little hair on the frame, mind you on the frame not on the plate, now this is completely negligible, but nooo Shahzad Khan had to be a b***h, so I don’t care if a hair’s hangin on the frame, it far from touching my food, and I m completely aware of that, but halfway through the meal, wait not half way through, I guess it was aound the last bits of the food, when our server comes to ask us if we need anything else, it just comes out that oh lookii there’s hair on my food and it’s not ours.. She’s like ‘Oh Sir it’s on the frame, I’ll just remove the frame for you..’, I m like ‘Alright sure…’ just then the hair falls on my plate, now this is what I wanted but not planned, so the hair falls on my plate, and I m like ‘Oh my god! I can’t eat this, I mean seriously you expect me to eat this now’ and this was not a screaming tone, I was pretty calm, but she’s freaked out (1st Accomplishment! Wohoo), so she’s like I’ll just get it replaced for you.. I m like ‘Yeah sure, I mean thats about right, get it replaced’ so about 10 minutes later, I have a new Espetata on the table… Since I had eaten most of the last one, I wasn’t really hungry, so I ate half, got the rest packaged along with some other food that my friends had left, and we gave it to a poor kid outside.

Oh wait I forgot to mention these people haven’t seen the 2 girls 1 cup video yet.. I mean come on, who hasn’t..just get done with it.. See See now.. I m willing to give out the direct link on request on my IM or facebook.

Then on Sunday I get to meet Uzey, Abdullah & Asim after quite some time.. and man that was fun, no that was Awesome. We ate at Copper Kettle and man those people who named those items on the menu were seriously perverted.. no shit man. They have items like ‘Kiss my buns’, ‘Belly Dancer’ and some other shitily awesome names

Anyways, I think I’ve completed some other stuff too, and I m pretty happy about it.. Did I tell you that Death note is pure awesome, I mean it’s F**kin Amazing…. and Ryuk is the DUDE!

For a long time till I blog.. Cheers.

It’s good that it’ didn’t hit us Alhamdolillah

A little video I made:

I heard Phet did alot more damage in Oman and other places it hit, but I think we’re safe for now.. Though I think the next big cyclone thats gonna hit us, we’re not gonna be able to dust it off our shoulders that easily, and besides it would open up alot of things our government managed to f**k up. Roads, electricity, water supply, sewage etc etc. Bleh..

Lets hope that never happens and we stay safe for a very very long time, Inshallah.

Also Coke Studio Season 3 is here. check out their songs.. they’re Awesome, with a capital A!

May God bless.

This post is not written by me, but I do agree to the points raised here.
The original post can be found here. You can also download the ‘Free the internet’ desktop wallpaper here.

Pakistani Citizens Demand an End to Internet Censorship and Intimidation:

On Wednesday 19th May 2010, the Lahore High Court ordered the banning of Facebook across Pakistan. Facebook, a widely used social media network, has over 500 million active subscribers, globally. In Pakistan, over 2.5 million people use Facebook to stay in touch with their friends and family, conduct business, philanthropic campaigns, manage events, and share photos, news, and other content. Some weeks ago, a user of Facebook created a page called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”, asking other users to submit drawings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on 20th May 2010. The contents of this page have been considered blasphemous, resulting in a nationwide ban on the entire Facebook domain, instead of just the Facebook page itself. Between the 20th and 22nd May 2010, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocked access to over 600 websites.

We condemn all content on the Internet that is abusive and disrespectful of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). However, we also strongly condemn the blanket ban on Facebook and the blockage of other websites. Every citizen has an inalienable right to information and by banning countless websites, Pakistanis have been denied the right to communicate and interact with each other and the rest of the world and their access to information has been curtailed. The blanket ban on Facebook and other websites has also had a very negative impact on Pakistan as countless small businesses, nonprofit organizations, universities, students, volunteer groups, restaurants, art galleries, magazines, and media outlets use Facebook to conduct research, gain knowledge, operate businesses, and share information with their stakeholders. More importantly, Pakistanis have been denied the right to protest and express their condemnation of hateful and offensive content on the Internet as the very platforms that were, in fact, being used for dialogue and counter-argument, have been banned.

On Thursday 20th May 2010, a few members of civil society gathered at the Karachi Press Club to peacefully voice their opinion on the ban. Members of the press turned unruly and started threatening the citizens with contempt of court and blasphemy and labelled them as non-Muslims. A conglomeration of political groups were protesting outside the gates of the Press Club in support of the ban on Facebook. Some journalists attending the press conference informed the protesters about the viewpoint of the members of civil society, resulting in graver threats of violence. All the civil society members present at the Press Club managed to escape narrowly, after some verbal harassment as well as physical jostling.

Article 19 of the Pakistan Constitution guarantees every citizen shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression, and there shall be freedom of the press, subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, 1[commission of] or incitement to an offence.

Pakistani Citizens Against Internet Censorship and Intimidation have not violated the Constitution of Pakistan or committed blasphemy in any way as they have never shown any disrespect towards Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In fact, they have repeatedly condemned offensive and hateful content against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on Facebook before it was banned, on websites that have not been banned, on electronic media, as well as in print media.

Our Demands

1. The right to freely express our opinions without fear of threats and violence
2. An end to Internet Censorship and en-masse banning of websites

Endorsed By

1. Uks Research Centre-Islamabad – Tasneem Ahmer, Director
2. Shirkat Gah – Women’s Resource Centre – Fauzia Viqar
3. Aamir Raza Memon – Center for Peace & Civil Society
4. Pakistan ICT Policy Monitors Network
5. Bytes for All, Pakistan
6. Digital Rights Institute, Pakistan
7. PeaceNiche, Karachi
8. I.A. Rehman – Human Rights Activist
9. SAFMA

It’s been a really long while since I wrote on my blog I think, was time I should update this baby of mine.

I’ve been in Karachi for about more than 2 months, and to tell you the truth I love it here more than I liked it there, sure I had drums and all, but this place is a blessing I tell you, for one I can enjoy Bar B Q’s till the morning instead of having to wrap it up by 11pm, that seriously sucked.

Anyways, I got my new Macbook sometime back and boy it’s awesome, it’s like super awesome, plus it looks even better with my magic mouse. My old Mac I handed to dad since he had fallen in love with this machine. So he’s finally getting on the internet you ask ? Internet.. he’s on Facebook, imagine that.. within a week… He was on PC for more than a year and hated it.. now he loves it and he’s metting up new people, it’s awesome.

I have also managed to escape a close iPhone snatching.. I swore at the guy.. how cool is that

Also I’ve been made a Founder at a deviantart group ‘dA-Pakistan‘ , if you’re an artist and are on Deviantart, you should definetely join us.. the crew involves Umar and Anam.. awesome people I tell you.

Coming back to the present times, I attended the blog awards yesterday, man it was awesome, even though I wasn’t feeling well, I decided I would go.. I had some suggestions on some of the topics being discussed, but I decided not to speak, again I wasn’t feeling well.. But I should’ve screamed about them. Pictures here.

Thats all for now.

Last weekend was probably one of the best ones I’ve had in some time. Yes better than the previous awesome weekends on a different level though.

I was at this place called Mubarak Village, which happens to be a fishermen beach, and it’s not just a beach, it’s one hell of a place with hills right next to the sea.

I went with some 24 other people, some of them with their fancy fancy cameras, others with maybe no cameras. We had to be there by 6pm, but well yes we let it loose and reached there by 9pm.

Our plan was a night stay, bon fire, bbq and lots of fun, and thats just what we did!

We had an awesome BBQ there, we went hill climbing in the morning and enjoyed the awesomeness of the clean beach. It’s one hell of an experience.

Cheers to Omair, Zair and Adil for making it happen.

I’ve been planning on writing this post for ages, but the XuQa redesign just didn’t let me spare a few minutes, but now that I have some, I shall speak.

The redesign had taken over us for quite some time, this whole redesign process started some 3 months back, and honestly redesigns are more effort and pain than first hand design, sure you already have basic elements in place, and most of the functional part + users are used to that UI. Now it’s quite an amount of brainstorming sessions that makes sure that all aspects of the present UI are covered in the new UI, unless of course something has to be cut down.

When we started the redesign of XuQa, we mostly planned on adding some features and fixing some issues which had been left incomplete or faulty by the last developers. Our goal was to fix most of the problems our users faced and make their life on XuQa simpler. I would like to give Onur and Umut a round of applause for their input and understanding of the Turkish XuQa community, Our CEO who knew exactly what we had to make right and of course our developers on the project Rahil (CTO), Ahmer (Senior Developer) & Rashid (Flash developer), our Quality Assurance Engineer Faraz. People from the management Fraz and Ahmed who made it possible that we could be as big of morons as we can be provided we pumped out our energy on this big baby whom we call XuQa.

I would also point out that Fraz currently is unstable health wise and would appreciate if you could say a small prayer for his health.

Even though the relaunch went fine, there are still little bugs that need to be squashed. In the next few days we’ll be fixing as much as we can, wish us Good luck.

Our current XuQa team consists of the following people:

• Zaki (Chief Executiove Officer)
• Rahil (Chied Technical Officer)
• Ahmer (Senior Developer)
• Shahzad Khan (Creative Director)
• Rashid (Flash Developer)
• Faraz (Quality assurance Engineer)

Thanks.