It was an author, bookman, and librarian Lawrence Clark Powell who said, “My life has been a series of opening doors into wonderful new rooms –
wonder, but not without fear, pain, and sorrow, and always with the voice of the Lord reminding me that nothing is free and must be paid for by service to others…”

Honestly, I copied it from another speech.

Ladies and gentlemen:

Toastmaster is a group of extremly helping individuals where everyone gets a chance to get embarrassed. They are so supportive that they publicy tell you how bad you were with your aahhss and umms, please don’t count those. Well, today I am your “volunteered” prey.

On the dawn of December, 28th, 1984, I opened up my eyes in a small village in district chakwal. Since then I’ve opened many doors and in the next few minutes, I’ll take you through a few of them.

My early childhood was very ordinary. As a child I had a deserved reputation as a shy and coward child, but a few even thought I was innocent, yeah right, they just don’t know me well. I had my first crush at the age of 5, and that too on my english teacher. Since then I’m always obsessed with my english teachers. OK, on a serious note, she was pretty, don’t know how she looks like now after being a mother of half a dozen kids. These are the memories of my small village “English medium school” where the name of English medium school is actually written in Urdu. I got my primary education in my village school, then my family moved to rawalpindi. I got admission in another not so prominent school in rawalpindi where I did my matric. I was among the elite student of the class in term of marks obtained in exams, I got the second highest marks in board exams, which even surprised me, probably the only criterion that could get me that many marks was number of sheets used in exams. I was damn good at that.

Afterwards I got admission in Fauji foundation college. Honestly, I never enjoyed my college life, it was pathetic. I was expecting freedom and I had some other “hidden agendas” that most of the college guys dream about at that age but the college administration was even more strict than my school probably because of the “fauji factor”.But somehow I managed to get just above average marks and get out of that college.

Then comes my university, aahh, the best thing ever happend to me. But how I got into NUST is another interesting stroy. Like most of you who never wanted to be an IT professional, I confess, we are all in the same boat. Telecom and Electrical engineering was my top priority as all my college mates had. The interesting thing is that when I was at Nust HQ to submit my documents, a friend dropped in and said, “look this is another degree that NUST has recently started, its called BIT”, I said “what the hell is that?”, he said “Its either related to computer science or probably mass communication”. And we decide, there and then, that this is our future, go for it. And that’s how we applied for BIT and got admission in SEECS which was NIIT back then. But just in a few days I developed an obsession with technology, though, unfortunately, my grades never reflected that. If someone asks me about the best moments in my life, I’ll always mention my experiences in my university. I made the most amazing friends, studied with very intersting and such a huge variety of people from all over the country. I, for the first time started overcoming my personality problem. It was honestly, very difficult to study 6 subjects at the same time and I had to put every bit of my energy to cope up with the course work. My parents were very protective, but it was so different when I made it to the university, they gave me total freedom and I exploited it :P. I, for the first time started exploring the world myself, I overcame my shyness, my hesitations and the fears of unknown. It was like my reincarnation. And the best thing that happened to me during my stay at university, I got married to my class fellow. This is another interesting story, my mum was talking to my father on phone, I approached her and told her in her ear, “Ammi men pyar ho gya a, menda waya ker choro.” That was Chakwali punjabi which means that “mum I’m in love and I wanna get married”. Yeah I know that sounds so cheap, but that actually happened. My father than talked to me and said, “oye kaun hay o kuri, kahan ke hain, kya kerti hay, baap kon hay us ka and last but not the least Ullu da patha”, I hope that needs no translation. And that’s how it all started and eventually I got married and now its an old story since I’ve been married for last 5 years and we have a beautiful daughter Rameen, who has just turned 3. That’s the story of my univerity life. Oh, as a co-incidence, my wife and myself are both java developer, though she is much better than me. So she also knows the only thing I know, Java.

Soon after my studies, I joined my father in law in his business. They are telecom subcontractors. Their job is to install all the equipment on the telco towars and the BTS rooms. The best part of the job, You had to climb up to the top of the towars very often. God! that was horribly awesome experience. You will understand this only when you’re sitting at the top of 70 or 80 meter towar and you can actually feel it moving back and forth with the wind. But I was a total misfit there as I knew nothing about telco so I left them after just a couple of months and got another job in DPS as a java programmer and then worked in Terdata as a consultant and now I’m here again working as a java developer. My love and passion for programming has only increased in the last 5 years into my professional career. In emumba, I’m seriously loving my work. I’m working with a great team of extremly competent guys and for the first time I feel like I’m actually learning a lot in a very short time. I’m not only gaining the technical knowledge but also that how a startup business work.

I would like to share with you my hobbies. I’m a wonderer, I find it very interesting to meet different people and visit different places. Whenever I get a chance, I travel. I run, I joge, I walk and I hike a lot, my best record is going up to monal on trail 3 and coming back by road in two and a half hours with no pit stops and with just half a liter of water. But all that depends on my body that always let me down, I’ve severe problems with my bones, my knee joints and my shoulders, otherwise I would’ve been an athlete. My other love is my love for photography, I don’t remember when it started, but it was definitely in my blood. My father owned several cameras when it was supposed to be a very luxury item which was only found in studios. I now own a dslr and I know how to use it. But my wishlist is long. Its hard to buy a lens woth 70 80K and go home and tell your wife about it. Because you will soon realize what kind of mistake you’ve committed. I also love swimming, though I just recently started it, before that I swam in several different dams but wearing a life jacket, but now I can swim without it and I’m so happy about that. I love reading books but I don’t do it usually, and I wish to be a bookman. My wishlist goes on and on and on, the top three things on my wishlist are sky diving, if I survive then bungee jumping and scuba diving.
It is like the Lawrence Clark Powell quote I mentioned earlier – nothing is for free, – not the keys to the doors, not the wonderful new rooms . In each of these pivotal moments of my life – other people (my parents, my friends and the society) played major roles. I consider myself extremly lucky that I am probably among the 3 4 percent of the elite of this country who’ve studied in good colleges and universities and have worked in the best multinational corporations. We are technically and finincially among the elite. I feel very obliged to Allah for all of this. Lawrence Clark Powell said that, these moments, are paid for by service to others – I agree. And I wanna pay it back to my community especially my village where the generations are being ruined by low quality education. I want to provide them world class education right in their village. Here I am learning to reach out to them and help them.

The recent cricketing events is a proof of it. Break the news, bark at your players,  ask FBR to investigate their tax returns, visit their homes and villas and tell people this is owned by illegal money and get to the conclusions as soon as possible (before any other tv channel does so) . We (TV channels) never bother to investigate the news by ourselves, we rely on other news agencies for that.

I don’t know whether this whole cricket spot and match fixing controversy is a conspiracy or not but I believe that if the team management and the board were strong enough, no body ( ICC or Scotland yard) would have dared to go this far. The board could punish the players ( if found guilty ) by themselves.

PCB is headed by a fully retard,  half paralyzed and half blind old Johnny who stammers in front of media and bumbles about as if he is drunk. And the team manager, half blind, almost deaf, who speaks like if he has a balloon in his mouth and he walks on stick. And the other manager, Mr. Shafqat Rana, who reads newspaper all the day while sitting in the gallery and thinks a lot because he has nothing else to do.  Oh, and we have a security officer too, wow, a retired colonel, oh almighty we are so safe now, no one could harm us. He sleeps tight so that the players could enjoy themselves in the casinos with girls and gambling all the night and play in the morning. Don’t we have any “not so disabled and old ” person in this country who can head this board. An obvious choice could be Ehsan Mani, but perhaps he has to find a link in the government before he could even think about PCB chairmanship.

Our high-commission in UK is probably more active than the PCB, I would suggest Wajid Sham ul Hassan to take the responsibilities as interim PCB chairman because Ijaz Butt is busy saving his job.  None of the players or the board members have had enough courage and ethics to resign by themselves. Go away you old, useless crippled band of brothers , go to hell, and let some fresh blood pump in.

Whatever the case may be, at-least Amir should be saved at all cost. He is young and the most talented bowler cricket has seen in the recent times. He must be saved at all costs. So many players from other counties had had alligentions on them which were proved right later on, but no one dared to life ban the “big guns” of the cricket just because their boards are strong. Look at the Aussies, the pioneers in the match fixing, ICC is their keep. What about the Indian cricketers, perhaps none of them can be spared from match fixing alligations. You can count hundreds of examples, look at Windies,  the South Africans and so on and so forth, but none of the big shots were severely penalized.

The boards protect their players’s asses, our board burns them to save themselves.

You can throw away Salman Butt if he is involved as he has never been a match winner. Asif on the other hand, has already had his hands dirty, so PCB can even get rid of him but PCB may slap Amir on his face, kich his ass, fine him heavily but save him.

So, all in all, get rid of the old retired Johnys, pump in some fresh blood, and cricket will be on its feet again.

تو لال ہے میرا نہ ستا مجھ کو

پچتاۓ گا ایک دن میں چلی جاؤں گی

نہ چاہتے ہووے بھی دنیا میں اکیلا چھور جاوں گی

زمانہ دیکھا ے گا گرمی کی شدت تجھ کو

یاد کر کے روے گا تو پھر مجھ کو

مدتوں سے میری ماں نے سینے سے نہیں لگایا

اب وہ چلی گئی جب کچھ کہنے کا وقت آیا

The greatest thing about this lethal weapon is that this weapon does not physically harm your enemy but he will surly get some mental shocks. This mental illness will last for long. The most amazing thing about this weapon is that this weapon is used in public and in front of media. With this method, you can inflect greatest of insult to your enemy.

Since this weapon does not cost millions and because of its ease of use, you do not need any formal training. This is the very reason of its great popularity.Muntazir will be excited as he did not find himself alone in this war against their enemies. Since the day he started his war against his enemy, many followed. Many world leader, politicians and heads of controversial  financial institutions are the victims. After Ass the second, the episode continued and more and more people were mentally harmed. Chinese PM, Indian Foreign Minister and a couple of more Indian politicians, heads of some financial institutions and the latest victim was some IMF head who was insulted in Turkey by a young man.

But the latest of it all happened in Pakistan. A student of Karachi University threw his shoe on a professor from USA. But this was the first time that this thing happened in an education institution. Muntazir’s wing has penetrated even the educational institutions:P.

Should I feel proud that this thing happened in my country? And should I also feel proud that we have started insulting our guests? I don’t think so. If it had happened to a politician whether it be an American politician or a Pakistani, rather hitting a  Paki politician with a shoe would satisfy my internal evils more :P. “App samajh tu gae hoon gay main kiss ke baat ker raha hoon? :P”

But what happened in KU, is insulting. KU is an educational institution, and that man was a professor and he was our guest. Well, he was a teacher after all. This is not what our religion, ethics, values and our tradition teach us.

The most embarrassing  thing of all was that our media, as usual, looked like defending that student. This is the most simple way of getting popular.That student had no reason to throw shoe at a professor. Having arguments with your professor and running out of rational thoughts does not mean that you start fighting with him.While listening to his statement on media, he defended himself and called it as an act which is in favour of Pakistan and that he represented the feelings of all Pakistanis. Further he said that he should not be punished and asked for the support of all student organisations.

I simply have three word (and three star) answer , What the F***. This is hilarious and most stupid act. This means that, whenever I find a “Gora” on the street I should start throwing shoes at him, get caught, call the media and defend my act and prove it as an act that is beneficial for all and lastly I should say that I represented the feelings of the whole nation. What do I get in return, lots and lots of attention and cheap popularity. My “bache” will be so proud of me.

My only concern was that our electronic media should behave in a sensible manner and if they are so eager to listen to the shoe thrower’s stance, they must also ask him some questions like how his cheap act will help Pakistan in making its image better?

Please comment, I want listen what other say.

The basic strategy you’ll need to employ in taking silhouette shots is to place your subject (the shape you want to be blacked out) in front of some source of light and to force your camera to set its exposure based upon the brightest part of your picture (the background) and not the subject of your image.

In doing this your subject will be under exposed (and very dark, if not black).

There are a lot of very technical descriptions going around on how to take great silhouette shots that you might want to look up but let me attempt to run through some basic steps that should get you the results you’re after. In essence what we’re trying to do is make your camera think that it’s the bright parts of the picture you are most interested in.

Here’s how to do it:

Image by Luza

Image by Thomas Hawk

Image by 3blindmice

Image by Alexbip

Image by !!sahrizvi!!

Silhouette by !!sahrivi!!

Photo by FreeWine

Photo by simpologist

Photo by Kalandrakas

Silhouette by Yves Lorson

Image by Thomas Hawk

Photo by Fort Photo

When shooting with a subject in low light situations you generally have two options; either to shoot with a flash or to shoot with a slow shutter speed.

1. Flash – When shooting in low light with a flash in auto mode your camera will choose a relatively fast shutter speed. This means that your subject will be well lit and that if it is moving it will be frozen and as a result will be sharp. The problem with this is that it can also leave your subject lit up too brightly and can leave it’s background looking very dark as there is not enough time for the camera to collect any ambient light.

2. Slow Shutter Speed – The other option is to turn your flash off and shoot with a longer shutter speed in order to collect enough available light from the image to get a well exposed shot. This can be an effective technique if you’re shooting landscape or environmental shots where everything is nice and still – however if you’re shooting a moving subject it means you’ll get motion blur which could ruin your shot.

Both of the above options are legitimate technique but both have their weaknesses. Another options to consider is slow sync flash.
Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/slow-sync-flash#ixzz0PGgHGoS3

Slow Sync Flash is a function found on many cameras that tells your camera to shoot with both a longer shutter speed as well as firing the flash. This means you get the best of both worlds above and can both get a relatively sharp shot of your main subject as well as get some ambient light from the background and foreground.

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Image by Scott-5×5

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Image by HolyHolySnappers

Image by Russell

Image by omeara.tim

Gawal Mandi food street was established a few years ago and it quickly gained popularity among desi food lovers. Lahore is famous for its food and culture and Gawal Mandi food street offers the best desi food at one place. In my recent tour to Gilgit I have heard about this food street from foreigners as well and they liked it.

Gawal Mandi food street

Photo taken from MyIdealPakistan.com

But once again a tradition and history has feel victim to Pakistani political rivalry.  It is a common practice that politicians in our country change and oppose the policies of their predecessor. Stopping rather destroying the projects of their predecessors is an activity that goes unnoticed. Different projects are abandoned regardless of their value to the country and all this just because of their political rivalry.

Gawal Mandi at night

Photo taken from http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KapK1Zuccog/SW5bLkQ2-RI/AAAAAAAABZA/6GVpXuABhhQ/s1600-h/street.JPG

Gawal Mandi food street has feel prey to a similarly political rivalry.  This project has been finished and destroyed without thinking of its cultural value, its importance as a city food center and without thinking that how many people will lost their jobs just becuase of our moron, stupid, ignorant idiots.

This time the famous Mr. Shahbaz Shareef CM of Punjab, the most hypocrate person among all and a member of Bald Brothers group ( by the way the copyrights of the term The Bald Brothers TBB solely belongs to me  :P) had to crush the remaining popularity of  former CM Parveez Elahi in Lahore. And to do this the stupid retard baldy didn’t think that how many people will lose their jobs and businesses because of his stupid decision.

This is unfortunate, very unfortunate. We have lost a famous and traditional place to hang out. A place that we always loved. A place that always fascinated us.

Gawal Mandi you feel prey to an idiot but we will always remember you and we will always praise you.

At the end shame on our politicians especially the most hypocrate among all  ” The Bald Brothers”…

May God have mercy on our Pakistan

Today I am missing my family specially my little kiddo. She has been a gift of God. I had a healthy breakfast at Madina hotel and then Mr.Yaqoob- the owner of Madina guest house – came again. He is a very polite, friendly,and corporative person and we started our discussion on politics, current affairs, religion, tourism, ills of society etc. It was a long discussion for about two hours. Then he asked a guy at Madina to pick some apricots from the tree and we enjoy those apricots. Frankly, those were eh best apricots I have ever eaten. Even those green and unripened apricots were sweet.

I was waiting for Raji who was supposed to come back today.Raji is the tour guide at Madina and a very good friend of mine. His good attitude and extensive knowledge of Northern areas of Pakistan make him my favorite tour guide of madina.

Raji at Nanga Parbat View Point

Raji at world's highest lake

I know him from my last trip to Gilgit and he also studied Japanese language from my mother in law. Although he will not accompany me but he will guide me and will plan me trip.

From last three days he is in Fairy Meadows with a Japanese tourist. I just got a call from Raji and he will be here today.

Fairy Meadows

I like talking about madina hotel again. Its a different sort of hotel rather I would call it a social networking hotel where you meet a lot of people from different nationalities and you know lots of things about different cultures.

Madina Guest House

Madina Guest House : Map of North painted on wall

Madina Guest House : Canopy type restaurant and meeting place

Actually when you talk to them, you start hating yourself for being an IT freak who sits in front of a machine all day all night. You eat and sleep there and I am hoping that we the IT guys will soon get custom made toilet seats so that we do not commit the sin of getting our eyes off of our computer screen any time. A Pakistani IT professional can be recognized easily by big tummy and fat ass, yeah thats exactly how are IT professionals look like.

I really feel sorry that we see the world trough Google Earth,maps, wikis, blogs and websites but we never actually get out of our rooms to look and feel that world. Akhh leave it, this ain’t going to change.

After eating those apricots, I took my camera and roamed around in Gilgit city for about two hours from one end to the other and took some photos and sat there on the bank of river Gilgit for a while, collected a few stones as souvenir and started my walk back to the hotel until I was stopped by two Rangers ( a paramilitary force ) personnel for taking photos of bridges and somehow they found me suspicious. Accoding to them its unusual to find some local tourists alone. But after some conversation with them they invited me for a cup of tea but I continued my journey back to the hotel after thanking them.

Gilgit City: NLI Market

Gilgit city

Hanging bridge on Gilgit river. You will a lot of hanging bridges on your way to Gilgit

Hanging bridge in Gilgit city

On my way to carved Buddha statue on a mountain near Gilgit city

Buddha carving near Gilgit city

Photo by Rowan Castle

A complete picture of mountains on which Buddha is carved

Photo by Kettebelletje

close up of Buddha carving

A beautyfull stream in Gilgit city

After coming back to Madina I offered apricots to a tourists from Holland, Mr. Frank. A very polite and knowledgeable and experienced tourist. My conversation with him lasted for more than four hours. We sat there under that canopy sort of restaurant till late night. Since he was an experienced tourist, he shared with me the experiences of his journey.

He was on a world tour and was staying in Pakistan from last two month. Its not surprising that to find many foreigners staying in Pakistan for such a long time. In Gilgit you will find that most of the tourists live there for many months and use Gilgit as base camp for their tour to North of Pakistan. Foreign tourists come here either from China or India. Most of them are on a wold tour. They hike , climb mountains, track and camp at several place before they leave for either China or India. But I found Mr. Frank most adventurous among all as he was planning for a trip to Afghanistan via Baluchistan and then to Iran. Another English guy may accompany him.

Surprising for me that most of the tourists hated India. They found the Indian people rude, mean and irritating. That was unheard of, and Mr. Frank seemed much disturbed by the large scale poverty, dirt , pollution and population of India. Its certainly good to see many foreigners still visiting Pakistan in such a grim security situation.

There was a beautiful blond staying in Madina. Mr. Frank and I were both interested in her :p. I was a little more curious to talk to her. So I switched on dirty side of my mind and started thinking about how to talk to her. But whenever I got ready to go for some chit chat, her king size giant boy friend drops in from no where and off course I get intimidated by his physique.

Raji was late as they were stuck up in a landslide caused by the blasting on Karakoram Highway (KKH) . KKH is getting rebuilt and its creating a lot of hassle for vehicles.

The wonder of the world - KKH

Photo by Amir Mukhtar Mughal

The beautiful KKH

Photo by Amir Mukhtar Mughal

He came at about 8 p.m and then we had dinner together, the dutch, Japanese, Raji and me. After lunch Raji made the plans for my tour. I have to drop off my plans to visit Khunjrab pass ( China border) because of budget and time constraints. No one is with me to share my burden so its hard for me to spend so much money on transport. So we planned that I will only go to Chitral, Phander and Kalash and will go by public transport.

Tomorrow I’ll leave for phander valley in local transport. It is supposed to be 6-7 hours journey. Then a night at phander.

Phander Valley

Photo by Noor Khan

Next morning I’ll leave for Mastooj. Mastooj is a town before Chitral. It will be about 5-6 hours probably on local transport. At Mastooj I’ll try to find transport to chitral but as it’ll be dark already so it may bot be possible to leave that day. The next day I’ll Inshallah leave for chital. Its another four hours jounrey and then I may stay there for a day or tow and then to kalash valley.

In Kalash valley there are three other valleys Bomborat, Raboor and another one. According to Raji I must spend alone day in each valley as they are worth watching. So lets see what happens. If everything goes as planned then I’ll go to Islamabad from Chitral by air. It may cost another Rs. 3200. Lets hope my budget permits me to do that and if I can get a seat or not. So its the end of day three. Its time to go to bed since I am much tired. Bye bye folks…

Photo by Ishtiaq Ahmad

Photo by naturalbrain2000’s

Photo by ▓▒░Farrukh� �▒▓’s

Toli peer is a plane at the top of the mountains of Rawlakot and is a place where you can camp and hike or track and enjoy the nature at its purist.

Photo by FourWanderer’s

Photo by shahzaibh’s

But all my love for the place soon vanished when I saw alot of rubbish thrown all around by our local tourists. This was certainly disturbing. There was a small camp style hotel and they were throwing all their garbage in those hills making the place ugly. People threw everything from plastic bags and disposable plates and jars to plastic wrappers of different eatables. This certainly shows the mentality and thinking of your countrymen and their irresponsible behaviour.

We need to stop this, we need to educated people not to do this before its too late. Help us and support this cause and make this country clean and green.

Please join our cause on Facebook, help us with your suggestion and share your thoughts to preserve the beauty of our country.

Thanks