Those magical, magical days…..

While I was chatting with a few friends of mine, at night, a memory long buried popped up in my head and demanded attention. And I asked The Writer, when I didn’t think he would know a thing about it, let alone remember it;

“Did you in your childhood read/heard the story Podna Podni?”

And as a reply, I got an excerpt from the story itself. He remembered the full story word for word. We went on discussing our favorite parts of the story. Mine was

“Guhs guhs mere kaan mein guhs” :P

(While on another window I started narrating the whole Podna Podni story to a friend, who had somehow missed it in her childhood).

This is a story I heard in Kassette Kahani. I don’t know how many of you have spent your childhood hearing these Kassette Kahani’s but I know a major part of mine was spent listening, and relistening to them. Always getting my parents to buy me the volumes I didn’t already have. Each Kassette Kahani would have an advertisment of the Kassette next in the series, and then I would want that one too. Traded it with friends just so that I could hear the entire collection. Although some of these stories were the Urdu translation of fairy tales like “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Cinderella”, these would be the ones I have had had a pleasure of reading as well, but hearing it was another kind of magic.

In the Kassette, the story of Podna Podni is narrated by a Nani amaan to little kids.

For those of you who are wondering; Podna is the name of a little bird (am not sure what the English word for Podna is, was it Sparrow?) Anyways, the King’s men caught Podni and then Podna sets out on a mission to rescue his Podni from “Raja”. Along the way, he meets ants, ocean.. and something else, I still can’t remember what the third thing was, these three after hearing Podna’s noble mission, offers him their help, in reply to which, Podna says;

“Guhs guhs mere kaan mein guhs”

In the end, of course, like all kid’s stories, Podna rescues Podni from Raja with the help of his three friends…

This post is in the memory of all those days, we spent reading and hearing fairy tales. The time long gone, but which still gives pleasure. Those were truly the days… :D

A year gone by

I have been meaning to write this post since 1st July, 2009, but never got around to actually writing it, and until recently I had decided not to write at all.. But it’s worth a shot :)

So… 1st July, 2009 was the date I completed exactly one year at my job. One year gone by.. first year completed of the career journey. And if I think about it, a lot has changed since I graduated from University and joined my very first job. And of course, this is nothing new, it happens with every one, and so has happened with me as well.

There was a time, when I had spent a month at office and a senior had commented

“Aap ko aik maheena ho bhi gaya.. aur pata bhi nahi chala”. (You’ve been here for a month, it didn’t seem like a month to me)

I took no time in replying

“Mujhe se pochein, mujhe to aik aik din pata chala” :P

Such was the extent of my boredom, during the first month. All I was expected to do was to read documents and even edit them. It took me everything not to say

“You know na, I haven’t been hired as a technical writer, rather as a Software Engineer. My appointment letter actually says ‘Associate Software Engineer’.”

At that time, I couldn’t figure out WHY on earth was I being asked to edit some centuries old document, and put in what.. screenshots!!!!

I was also given the code of one of the projects and was asked to go through it

“Ghool ke pee lein isay”

my Boss would tell me. And this is what I tried to do, of course, I wasn’t actually able to do the same, but that did help me to understand a lot of things.

I can still remember my first meeting cum training session, where my supervisors explained the entire theme of the project on a small white board. I don’t think I remember any thing else from the meeting.. except a few terms I didn’t have a clue about.. and I wondered why everyone kept using them but I never realized those terms will become a part of my vocabulary, and I’ll be the one using them in every sentence that comes out of my mouth.. :P

My vocabulary is now punctuated with a lot of terms which don’t actually exist in the dictionary, and if they do, not at all in the sense we use them in our day to day life. The process started when I joined University.. I learnt the word Cheetah there, before that we simply used the word Genius or Einstein… and I thought the process would end there, and that I have learnt all the jargon terms.. but I was so wrong.. In this training session, the words that got my attention and got stuck in my memory were.. let me put the entire sentences here..

Code nahi phatna chaye

Peeli screen nahi aani chaye, chahe kuch ho jaye.. koi bhi screen aa jaye.. peeli screen nahi aani chaye…

Yeah.. go on, call me illiterate for not knowing these terms during bachelors, but we actually didn’t. We simply used to say, in plain terms.. “Yaar error aa gaya”

But now I use all these terms like I learnt them during my first year in this world and not the first year at job.

The first month went by slowly.. with no friends at the new place, my reserved self refusing to go and talk to any one unless and until it was absolutely necessary, avoiding a face-to-face conversation as much as possible, and using our network chat software, trying to figure out whether I’ll be editing documents all the time, or will I be given actual work someday, and then at a later time, am I Support Engineer or what, I should have joined Support instead of the so-called Development team.

But things began to roll, slowly at first, the clients called up with all the problems. In fact, my very first cut over was to go live with all the modifications. I was taken to the client side so that I can get accustomed to the environment, meet our clients and all. That cutover, went smoothly enough. Just one script refused to execute, giving an error every time we tried. I got nervous like anything.. saying things like

Phele to yeh script sahi chal rahi thi (This script worked fine before.)

Thankfully, my supervisor handled the situation pretty well, not loosing his head like I did on the face of a problematic script (:P).

And this above, is actually called a smooth enough cutover, because there are always problems.. always…

I was given a project, which can’t actually be called a project from scratch, but it wasn’t equivalent to giving support to clients either. I was to develop a new module in the existing site, and I wasn’t even able to complete that when I was given another project, I was asked to make changes (which started out as a few changes and later became a big change) in the same project (but on the existing modules).

Then came the time when I was to visit the client side and test out all the new developments and modifications. Again, my boss sensing my nervousness decided that he and my supervisor will go along with me, to make sure everything’s going fine.

My boss asked me then

How much time do you think it will take you to test out everything?

And I said something like.. two hours or maybe two days… and it actually turned out to be WEEKS!!! That time was horrible (but marvelous at the same time :D), I discovered a lot of things I had done wrong, because I didn’t know any better, I used to take the office laptop at home and worked there, then directly went to the client side the next day.

But all that going to the client side for so long, did a very good thing. Before that, I didn’t really like going to the office everyday, but after the client’s visit, I thought, going to office is much better than going to the client side, and though I hadn’t really made any friends at office, at least there was some one to talk to, I could roam about.. and that’s what I did when I came back.. I roamed about, and talked to everyone.. and I started to ease-in a bit with the environment..

Again changes were requested in the project currently deployed at the test server. And again I went through the same cycle; development, testing, testing at client side, entertaining their farmaishine (wishlist).. it was another month or so there.. and finally, a cutover.. on a SUNDAY!!!

During this time I got permanent as well.. thankfully.. I was worried that after so many problems occurring at the client side, they won’t make me a permanent employee… might even let me go.. :)

My Masters began after a month into the job as well.. so all was going at the same time, job, first project, first cutover, classes, midterms, assignments, finals… everything.. and we thought Bachelors was difficult. :P

So eventually the project ended, went live with it, and since then, it has been one project after the other, and the journey uptil now has been good. At the beginning, I took more tension then needed, but slowly I got used to it, now I don’t deliberately forget about lunch just because I have work to do. I’ll always have work to do, so better always have something to eat to go along :P

For once in my life, I am getting along with my seniors. Never during my academic life (till Bachelors) have I ever been friends with any of my seniors. My seniors didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them, that is changing (but not much), I hope for the betterment. :)

(This post, highly resembles another post of mine, doesn’t it.. can’t help it.. just love to talk about the first few months at my job :P)

So, I have grown from a fresh graduate to one-year experienced employee, from someone who sat quietly at the corner, working and only working, with no messengers connected, to a person to whom people keep telling “aik yahoo messenger hee reh gaya hai woh bhi khul lo yaar” (Only Yahoo! Messenger has not been installed, why don’t you go ahead with that too?), from a person who didn’t budge from her seat now keeps bugging people until one of them agrees to go to the tuck shop with her, from the person who came in the office, switched on her computer and started working immediately to a person who now gets everyone to go to the roof with her before starting work, from the person who completely forgot the meaning of the term lunch, now starts buzzing her lunch mates to go to lunch from noon almost every other day… and the list goes on…

I know this has been the story with everyone else, but looking back at the year makes me realize that it was a good first year, MashaAllah, Allah ka shukar, :D, hope the rest of the career is as fun, or more fun.. Let’s just keep hoping for the very best and nothing else :D

Ramzan is here...

And from tomorrow starts the blessed month of Ramadan in Pakistan. :)

We all know that this months brings with it blessings. But it's not only about fasting, it's also about earning more sawab in this month.

We should be praying more and reciting Quran more in Ramadan, and most of us definitely do that, but as it turns out for some of us (and here I am including myself), eat and sleep more during this month. Work and school goes out early so that gives us an opportunity to sleep during the evening as well. We go to sleep early at night so that we can get up in sehri, and then go to sleep again after fajar. This time, we should all try to spend more time in praying.. as one of my university teachers once said;

Sonay se kya ho ga? Kya kal phir neend nahi aye gee? Koi yeh keh de ke mein abhi zada so jaon to agla pura hafta nahi soan ga to woh aur baat hai, par aisa hota to nahi. Phir Ramzan mein to subha jaldi uth jaya karein aap loog. Neend to kabhi puri nahi ho gee.. shayad akhir mein ho jaye.. par woh bhi zaroori nahi

So, this time, let us all try to do the following;

• Recite Quran as much as possible.
• Recite the surahs we have memorized as much as possible. This can be done while travelling to and from work/school.
• Recite Kalmas as much as possible. Again, can be done while travelling to and from work/school.
• Try to memorize more surahs, but not just memorize the Arabic words, but the translation as well. And let us all try to understand the words.
• Educate ourselves about our religion. The only way we can improve the image of Muslims in the eyes of the whole wide world is to become better muslims, and we can do that only if we try to earn more knowledge about Islam.

Have a blessed Ramzan everyone. May Allah bestow us with his blessings always. Ameen. :)