NOW, it’s over… :D :D

Finally got my MS degree on Monday. Yaayyyyyyyy… Now it feels like it’s over, when I finally have the prove.

A lot of things happened since the time I was working on my Research Survey's Final report till now. A lot of things that I would have preferred not happening at all. But also a lot of things I am extremely happy about. :D

The day I got my degree in my hands, I decided to put an end to all the things and try and enjoy my life to the fullest. :) Not that I was not doing it before.. but still... I intend to read a lot of books and watch a lot and lot of movies :D :D

All the other things that I wanted to learn before and kept putting them off saying that I will read up on them after my MS.. I don't think I am going to do that.. because now I don't like opening any book other than novels... Though it has been months since I gave my final presentation.. I still haven't been able to bring myself to read anything useful..

The point is NOW.. it's over, because NOW I have the prove. :)

Thanks to the friend who sent these congratulations images. They sure made my day.. :)

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

Cricket World Cup T20

It's been a long long time, almost two years, since I have watched cricket.
When I did watch, it was more for the love of watching Pakistan win than the love for the game itself. I have always been interested in Pakistan playing and winning (of course) as compared to enjoying the game.
And why it has been so long.... the last year at Bachelors, which we like to call the FYP year was spent doing a lot of things; studying, making your FYP, job surfing, interviews and of course enjoying the last year, celebrating days etc. I was so busy doing all this that I forgot about cricket altogether. Plus, the last World Cup, with the coach's story and Inzi resigning and Pakistan loosing horribly, didn't help at all. And then when that hectic year ended, another began, and the tempo was lost somewhere. :P
Anyways, so these days, I am not actually free, but I have found my long-lost interest in Cricket... that may very well be because of the fact that Pakistan is performing better. Plus, after every match, team mates discuss the highlights. All this was bound to get me back on my track..
So ta-daaaa I am back!!!!!!

Anyways, so I am not actually here to discuss World Cup T-20, if you wanna do that.. go hang out on Cricinfo... Here we'll be discussing something else... :P This is a trip down the memory lane.. only people who were there with me will be able to enjoy this (of that too there is only a thin chance) :P

So all of this cricket-fuss reminded me of the time when I used to be a die-hard fan and still couldn't understand why there was such a thing as LBW.. :P

Only one of the girls in my class shared my never-dying (which eventually did die.. but only for a while) devotion for Pakistan team, and only one was what I needed.
During breaks between classes, we'll rush to the computer labs, trying to find a free computer, hurridely logging in and then checking cricinfo for the latest updates. But more fun was when we didn't find any free computer, but still we couldn't risk not knowing ball-to-ball details, so we would go and nag others;

1. We would either find someone with cricinfo open (and there were many!!), we would make sure they happen to come in our route to the door, and give a furtive, non-interested glance to their computers while we were passing by, and there... we'll have our scores.
   


2. Or we'll sneak up on our unsuspecting friends, snatch away the keyboards from them, and check the score. And hear things like;
   
   "Koi kaam nahi hai tum logon ko kya????"
   
   
   "Don't you people have TRW class?"
   
   
   "Khud ko to kuch karna nahi hai.. humein to project/assignment bananye do...."
   
   

And then there was that day, when one of our teachers, who proved to be an even-bigger fan, started discussing a match, giving her comments (and that too like an expert) on yesterday's game, and suddenly one of the guys stood up, and said, with a very serious expression on his face..

"Ma'am mein abhi ja ke score check kar ke aata hoon"
like that was the most important thing in the world to do at that exact moment.. and seriously it was... :) :P


And then came the World Cup... I wasn't disappointed at Pakistan loosing, more disappointed by the way our people were reacting. No matter how important it is for anyone to watch Pakistan win, it's still just a game, nothing more, nothing less.. These are the people who make heroes and they are the ones who perish them.

And I remember.. well not exactly, as I didn't watch the match... the match between Pakistan and Ireland, which unfortunately Pakistan lost, and which was Inzimam's last match.

Back to the present, as Rambler and I were going up the flight of stairs, making our way towards the lunch room and we had an encounter with two ladies coming back from lunch....

Lubrilu:
"Mubarak ho India haar gaya"

And as the match I mentioned above (the one between Pakistan and India), was all that I had on my mind that day, I found the mention of cricket as a great opportunity to let everyone have an insight on my story... I immediately switched into my story-telling mode, not caring at all whether anyone was interested even a bit or not;

"I remember that Pakistan-Ireland match... and can you imagine? I had a mid-term the next day.. and that too of Software Engineering.. Why would they ever schedule papers during World Cup... "
FarQuest said:
"And I know you still watched the match"
Me:
"NO!!!! I studied.. and I flunked... well what else was I supposed to do... Almost everyone failed that mid-term.."

(And I don't know why I would mention something like me failing a paper on my blog.. but well.. I just did. And I'll get people to comment and vouch for 'everyone failed that midterm..' to prove that I wasn't the only one)

The reason I decided to mention this match was that I still remember the only glimpse I had of that match.. Inzimam-ul-haq going back to the pavilion after playing his last batting inning, with tears in his eyes... You put in so much of your time on a game, even if you are playing for yourself, and not for your country or your team, even then.... you deserve a better farewell than Inzi got.. His team mates might have given him a better one.. and maybe Pakistanis did too, and I just don't know of that, but what I do know is that what was happening in those days, our reaction at that time.. well, they weren't good.. :)

And as that was the last match I watched before I lost my interest in Cricket, it's going through my head these days, this match and all the fun we had in uni, the way we died to hear of the updated score. And I thought I should better write a post on it (for the need of having something better to write)

Anyways.. I am back on track.. I have started watching cricket again.. Pakistan is in Finals (YEHHH!!!)
Yesterday, everyone was hugging each other and saying Congratulations like Pakistan has won the final already.. (when it has won the semi-final only, I hope it does win the finals, and then it will be time for celebration..)
And about two to three times, the semi final was discussed by my team-mates.. Sentences like
"Kya awesoommee match tha yaar.."
kept landing on my ears...

P.S:

1. The first post I wrote on my blog was of Pakistan loosing the match.. :P
   


2. The Writer commented on me a few days ago..
   "You can write an essay on anything"
   Though I did not take very lightly to that comment.. but I think I have just proved him right, haven't I?
   Just wrote a mindless post.. on a mindless topic, which was completely OFF the topic... :P :P
   

And.... it's done!!!!

It's done.. I have finally given the presentation I was supposed to give for, I don't know, one month.. I have trying to avoid it, plus there were a lot of more pressing tasks to be completed. The task being the completion of a project and all.

Anyways, I should tell you what the presentation was about. It was about .NET Framework 3.0/3.5.

The story behind why I was given this particular topic to present was that since I joined I had been nagging everyone to migrate to 3.5 or at least make the new applications in 3.5. They finally got me to stay quiet by saying "Why don't you give a presentation on .NET Framework 3.5? Just highlight the new technologies introduced and convince us that we should migrate."
And since then I stopped mentioning 3.5.

Not that I didn't want to go through the hassle of making the presentation slides. It had more to do with gathering up the courage to speak in front of so many people (that means 10 people at the max) who you know have more knowledge than you about the topic you are speaking on.

Anyways, this time they scheduled it for Monday (that is, today 2nd March, 2009). I didn't get time in the office to work on the presentation, and I had a quiz this Saturday (which I am failing by the way) so I spent my entire Sunday on it. Full of tension, true, but learnt a lot things and that was fun.

I liked what WPF made possible, but I never really tried my hands on XAML, and I am glad I did for the presentation. Just a few lines of code were enough to get a button rotate on an angle of 45 and the window to appear in the form of Ellipse rather than the conventional rectangular shape one. :)

I might add a few references or a bit of the stuff I used in my presentation in near future (keep a note of 'might'). But none of the things I used were mine.... of course.. working on .NET 3.5 for a day doesn't make me any expert.

Anyways, almost the entire day, today (Monday) was spent on the presentation. I was supposed to cover all technologies (WPF, WCF, WF, WCS and LINQ) but was only able to touch WPF, WCF and LINQ. So in the morning it was decided that we'll go with this and for the rest of the things we'll schedule another presentation.
Showed the slides to my boss.
Then spent the rest of the time before presentation worrying about what I'll do when they start asking questions. And some of my team members encouraging me and telling me there is nothing to worry about. And also asking people not to ask questions.. the people I could ask to do so.
And installing Visual Studio 2008 on a laptop that will be used for the presentation, and not being able to.
Trying to find out why on earth does the VS 2008 on my Home PC doesn't color code XAML. Still don't have an answer for that though, can anyone answer that??

And finally the time for presentation came. Wasn't even able to connect the laptop with the projector. Two people were involved so that the slides could be projected for everyone to see.
During the presentation it seemed like I was giving it to my top-most boss only, with a few glances to the other people in the room. Couldn't help it. Even back in the days I used to debate, I concentrated mostly on one particular portion of the audience and had to make an effort to look at the others too.
A lot of questions were asked.
None of which I was able to answer :P
People got really excited about WPF though. :) And liked the two code examples I put in. :)

All in all the presentation went okay. With my supervisor supporting me by answering all the questions that were targeted towards me. And the rest of the team chipped in nice comments about the presentation and encouragement after the presentation ended. :D And it really felt good to hear those comments. :)

The remaining day was spent thinking 'shukar hai ho gaye presentation, tension to khatam huai'.

So an entire day was spent on a presentation. :P

Disclaimer: :P

This post is more for memory then for my two or three readers.. :) I should, like everyone else, keep the tag 'Dear Diary' as I have so many posts which fits this category. :)

Best Friends Redefined....

As I stood with my niece waiting for her 'van wala mama' to arrive, we started a little chat. To start the conversation my niece asked:

"Phopo, who is your best friend at university?"

Saying university in her own cute style, her own-created pronunciation, she utters the word like it's a very big word for her to say, which by the way it is, she is only three after all. Okay, back to the topic.
So I didn't know what to reply to this innocent question, so I decided to evade it by saying:

"Aap ho na phopo ke best friend."

At that she broached another question:

"Acha yeh bataein aap ko apni university mein sab se zada kaun pasand aata hai?"

At that I just laughed. Thankfully I was saved by the 'van wala mama'.

********

At dinner, I was narrating this story to my family (in my niece's absence). As they all laughed at the story, my brother (my niece's father) pointed out that she was actually defining what for her is the meaning of best friend when she asked me the second question.
After hearing my reply to the first question, she realized that I wasn't answering her truthfully, she realized that it wasn't the answer she demanded, she must have thought I was that dumb, so she rephrased the question for my benefit. For her,

"Best Friend" means "a person you like the most".

:) Which is not a very incorrect definition. Though this is not the way we adults define it, for us best friends would mean not the people we like the most, but the people who would give up everything for us.... well that's another discussion all together.

********

To confirm my brother's theory, I asked my niece the same two questions she had asked me in the morning. I asked her

"Who is your best friend?"

She gave me three names.
Then I asked her

"Who do you like the most in your school?"

She gave the same three names.

Definition confirmed:
Best Friend is a person you like the most. :) A simple and cute way to define the concept.

Memories I'll cherish

14 of June 2008, my last day of bachelors..... finally, done with the Open House, finally done with Blog Digger..... Four years of bachelors done, 16 years of education completed. 16 years seems a very very long time.
All these four years of bachelors, it was like "kab khatam hoon gein yeh 4 saal" In the fourth year the thoughts were "yaar buhat parh liya... 4 saal buhat hotay hain 3 saal ka bachelors hee theek tha".
And now when it has finally ended, I know there are a lot of memories I have made, a lot of things I'll miss, a lot of things I'll think about whenever I think about my university. A lot of things I'll remember... no, a lot of memories I'll cherish.

• The time when we used to bargain with the teachers while setting marks distribution. Talking like it was something we are buying rather than discussing the distribution. Saying things like "Munasib kar dein, Sir".
• Celebrating Color days in our last year. We celebrated Red day, Black day, White day... ahhh just a few days yaar we missed so many colors. Any ways, it was great, I participated in Black day, even though I HATE Black.
• The day we celebrated cheap day.... and even I got in the mood, and became cheap.. which was pretty unexpected, one of my friends Nazia stood there looking at me with her mouth agape, wondering what had gotten into me. Ahhh, celebrating cheap day, that was something :)
• When Ambreen and I used to chat just to decide what should be our next nick. Both of us would listen to English songs, choose lines from the songs and ask each other "would this be fine?" :P
• The get together at Midhat's place. We had loads and loads of fun, taking photos with funny poses :D
• The picture day. When all of us gathered at schon and took pictures, when we had our individuals pictures taken, when the entire batch gathered for the batch pic and started singing songs. Go to my previous post on picture day. :)
• When we used to sit in E1 in the seventh semester and talked as we always had the first slots free, discussing FYP, at first it was "yaar banayein to banayein kya sab kuch to phele se hee bana hua hai?" and then, when we finally got what to make it was "kaisay banaye ga itna sab kuch?" and of course there were the PMs to discuss about, and we had many other things to discuss completely irrelevant to studies. Planning the next day to celebrate, the next place to gather at, the next restaurant to hit (though we only got to hit Pizza Next and Karachi Food Centre) and many many things. The room changed to E4 in the 8th semester but the stuff was the same.
• The time we all played 'Bingo'. I didn't even know how to play Bingo, Ashba taught, it was like a class coz she used the white board to explain and believe me when I say it was the most interesting class :) And then we all played bingo. Bari mushkilon se mein aik hee game jeeti thi :P But it was a lot of fun. I also came to know that day that a couple of my friends used to play "Name Place Animal Thing" back in the initial semesters before papers as in, they had a paper in the evening and they would play Name Place in the morning instead of studying. I wanted to do the same thing, and so we decided that we too would play the game in one of the papers. In the last semester whenever one of us remembered this plan and voiced it, others would say, "nahi yaar aaj to nahi, Media mein khilein gain". But we didn't even play it in Media. But the Bingo day was fabulous. That day too has a post dedicated to it. :)
• The one hour long ride in Point. Some days were spent sleeping, some times we used the time reading books (most of the times novels rather than course books), some times the solace was used in thinking... and most of the times it was spend talking, talking continuously for one complete hour. I would remember the time when we talked only about food.
• The time when we finally got the opportunity to cross the "Quaidabad Bridge". The took a long time completing it and when it was finally done and our point crossed it all the students hooted. :D
• The time when I listened to my MP3 player in IPT lab and the next day the teacher said, looking specifically at me, "I know what was going on in the lab". I still don't know how she got to know I was listening to MP3 player, or maybe she just looked at me and as I was guilty I assumed that she was talking about me.
  
• My first and last Picnic. Definitely memorable.
• My first and last Annual Dinner, and that play.....
  

It's a long long list and I know I'll be coming back to it adding more bullets. For most of you, all these things won't sound as fun, but it was, all those days were fun. For me at least, I know my friends would relate to it. :)