Twitter twatter!

Here’s a poem about twitter as discussed on my facebook status!

Mubi at 19:32 on 30 June

seriously whenever i read the word 'twitter' it goes beyond me :p :$

 

Sami Mughal at 19:36 on 30 June

twitter twatter... mubi on a platter...
twitter twatter tee
twitter twatter
she had no idea...
so we jus bugged her with glee :D
and then to add
some rhyme to this,
we said hee hee hee :D

 

Mubi at 19:40 on 30 June

lol, twitter filled poetry for me :D i feel i am disabled when my eyes scan the word twitter and its so much in this poem :

Kate Nash – Birds

I love the lyrics of this song… :D

British Grand Prix 2009

Last Sunday I visited the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, which may just be the last time one sees it there.

Today I completed my photo-journalism course, and as an assignment I had put the event into the form of a photo story.

So I have just uploaded the slide show on to YouTube and here it is!

PS… the video was still being processed while I posted this… so if it says ‘Video Unavailable’ you know why!

Michael Jackson is dead

Just wanted to be among the first one to blog about it !!!

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/Michael-Jackson-Dies-Of-Heart-Attack-After-Being-Rushed-To-Hospital-According-To-TMZ/Article/200906415319936?lpos=Showbiz_News_Carousel_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15319936_Michael_Jackson_Dies_Of_Heart_Attack_After_Being_Rushed_To_Hospital,_According_To_TMZ

Amsterdam – 900 miles in 50 hours!

A long overdue post… one that is more than a month old… but I had to put this here, because as hectic as it was, it was also immensely fun. And of course it was my second time in Amsterdam but for once I was able to enjoy it for a few hours.

So this is the tale of another hectic road trip I made last month. I had to drive this van, and it was one crackly piece of kit. Very annoying, very noisy, and very bad handling. Not something you want to drive for such a long time. And do other stuff while you are at it too…

Anyways, so basically I had to get to Amsterdam at the end of a trade show we do every year, to get some stuff back from there. Before that I had to go meet a geek in Southampton in regards to some work he was doing for us. From there I headed to Dover, to catch the morning ferry to Calais, from where I had to proceed to Amsterdam, help the guys pack and load the vans, and drive back the next morning! Here is a map of what I did. Obviously A > B > C > D > E > F !!!

So my journey began with me heading to Southampton. Though not much exciting stuff happened there, I did manage to take this picture… :D

I stayed over at the Premier Inn at Dover that night. I have to say, I was impressed. It was my first experience there, but it was really comfortable. Had a good nights sleep and wonderful dinner in the hotel !!! So if you have to spend the night at Dover, that is definitely a good place to stay.

Next morning I caught the early morning Ferry to Calais, and from there I started my journey towards Amsterdam. You pass through France, and Belgium before you hit Netherland, and after some hours, you finally get to Amsterdam. It is, needless to say, a long drive! The good thing about France is that the speed limit there is 130 kph (80 mph). It is 120 mph in Belgium and Holland.

So I finally managed to get to Amsterdam around 4ish, and we got around to packing of the stuff and loading the vans around 5ish and were done, and dead tired by 8. We headed back to the hotel, and though there was the three of us, one man was not interested, so the two of us decided to head out. Heck we were in Amsterdam, and a hard day lay ahead (driving back), but at least we deserved a good dinner and a good outing.

So we called a taxi and went to the city centre. And my what a beautiful evening it was! Just the perfect summer evening with a cool breeze going, fresh air, and lots to see!

And yes… we took a little walk, scanning the area for a few restaurants, before we thought lets head to the famous (notorious) Red Light Area of Amsterdam. Weirdly it strangely reminded me of the one in Lahore, though I suppose there is no direct relation. Guess I was just feeling homesick!

Here are a few pictures from our walk there… they are not great… but we were dead tired and could not be arsed really!

 

I suppose this area is more of a tourist spot than a ‘business’ centre nowadays, or at least is most definitely was that day!

We browsed for restaurants and we came across this magnificent building, which was actually a restaurant!!!  So we decided to have dinner there, and my was it fantastic!!! Made all that hard work during the day feel worth it!!!

Wow i just noticed.. a girl is in the process of disappearing behind me in this photo !!! Or did we capture a ghost… woa !!! 

I know the pic is out of focus, but like I said, we could not be arsed!

So the next morning, after a hearty breakfast, we started to make our way back. Here is a picture I took at Calais, waiting to get into the ferry!

  

Sadly on our way back, M25 had the better of us! Took us 3 extra hours! But hey… this was the day before I did my Shoot London thingy. So I suppose alls well that ends well! 

Talking to Aliens

So this Twitter friend of mine (https://twitter.com/timegirl4468) and a combination of Star Trek sort of inspire this post.

Lets say… you come across an alien.

If luck serves you right, they are a friendly specie…

They treat you nice… and you end up on the alien version of Larry King Live or Winfrey Oprah or the Jonathon Ross show, or Top Gear even.

So amidst the laughs… this creature turns to you and says…

So … Sami (enter your name here) … tell us about your species… what do you think sets your species apart…

What would you tell them?

Emotions? Would anybody who has never felt any (Vulcan for example) know what an emotion is?

Feelings?

Bodily desires?

Passion?

Intelligence?

Speech?

Physical attributes?

The urge to party and fight like crazy?

Addictions?

OCDs?

Aliens… they may have something we might consider super power… telepathic abilities for example… or even smarter brains, or ability to jump higher than buildings, or move fast, or perform welding miracles through their body heat.

What if they ask us for any super powers…

We do a lot of super human feats everyday, but is there anything we would consider to be a super power?

Our ability to swim, walk, think, talk, love, hate, any of these could be a super power to an alien specie…

What do you think… what would be your answer to them… ?

Singing to you

Often on my drive home I sing along with the radio/ipod.
Sometimes I pretend you are sat next to me and I am singing to you.

Topgear reveals the Stig… really?

Oh what a day it was last night for Top Gear! Great first show for the new series, and of course the bomb shell as had been hinted by Mr Clarkson himself in his column in The Sun, was that THE STIG would be taking off his helmet.

And the moment came around roughly half eight BST. For those of you who missed it, here is a link to the BBC article about it!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8111588.stm

For those of you who cannot see this (out of UK readers perhaps) I am sure it is all already on YouTube!

So what do you have to say about this?

Do you think he is the Stig? Or is this another one of those Top Gear moments?

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is an exciting day for me…

I am going to Silverstone to watch F1 !!! British Grand Prix… a whole day full of adrenalin fuelled driving and cars and the smell of burning rubber and petrol… yum yum !!!

Pakistan play Sri Lanka in the T20 World Cup Final at Lords tomorrow… I will miss a bit of that but I will catch up on it later… Well excited about it though!

The new series of Top Gear starts tomorrow, and if Clarkson’s claim in Sun is anything to go by, Stig might be taking his helmet off. An episode stated by them to be ‘the greatest thing to air on television’, I am sure it will be pretty special !!!

However, I have a strong feeling he would be wearing a mask underneath that helmet!

Dangerous Words

Dude holidaying in Pakistan...    

                    Man I am having a blast!

ME...            

                    Dangerous words man... dangerous words!   

Dream a dream

My dreams have been on a weird high since almost a month. Most of them cause me to wake up a lot of times during the night, and though generally they are the regular nightmares (falling, missing something, looking for something, having a fight/argument, seeing something you love get destroyed), some of them come out to be absolute gems and movie worthy.

Okay, I take my last sentence back.

Last night, or perhaps during sometime this morning, I had a weird dream. One that perhaps I would like to know the meaning too.

So what I remember is, that my mother is telling me about some awkward plan and I am like oh so what about this little missing link in your plan, and she’s like well duh ! You will be the one filling in ! Now I will not go into details but it was something I do not normally get involved in so I was a bit pissed off, but I suppose I carried on.

So later I meet this hot babe. Now I do not think she looked like the person I had in my mind (as in when you meet somebody who you know from real life, but looks different in the dream), but funnily enough she is a person I do know, and perhaps I may have even tried on, but only met a couple of times and that would be more than an year ago!

Anyways, things are warming up, and somehow I just remember that I had to get involved in that mess my mother had thrown me into. So I check my mobile, just to make sure I have not had any missed calls/texts. Apparently I was supposed to be contacted. I see nothing.

On seeing my apprehension, hot babe tells me to that I should not let them push me around so much. I sort of tell her that I already know.

Anyways, things get warmer and we decide to go somewhere. Weirdly this somewhere happens to be a floor above where my family is. They seem to be asleep and we go past.

What happens next is totally weird. My mother comes in, and shoots this ‘hot babe’. Like literally kills her. Due to some weird reason she does not see me there, and I think I remain hidden. Later I escape and I try to run away but my mom says oh so you have finally gotten some sense in you. I tell her yeah I was passing by to check on that mess and whether anything needed to be done. She said oh yeah it has been delayed.

I think it was this state of confusion that I was in that I woke up…

I do not know whether I was surprised at what she did or how she did or what it meant… but I carried this feeling with me into the day.

And do not know what to make of it either… but aah well…

Any of you have any suggestions, apart from the bleeding obvious ones?

Dream

I was going downstairs yet upwards. Like on a downward spiral but
still soaring!! Maybe this is what drugs feel like!

Motion of light…

One of the things to capture during photography is ‘Motion’. This is basically a technique by which you try to show action through a static picture.

A simple example would be cars rushing by, formula-1 pictures, or a diving cricketer.

I captured a few during our practise run yesterday.

But one of the clicks I did made me wonder.

I call it… motion of Light. To me it shows the travelling of light… though obviously it does not. All down to interpretation really. But what it also makes me wonder is, if we do exceed speed of light one day, would we see a ‘light boom’ just like we get a sonic boom?

Here are some of the few I captured yesterday…  

This dude’s work was awesome. I will post a few of the graffiti pictures I took there in a later post.

 

And I went out today, because it was a lovely day! This is Campbell Park, showing off the beautiful Milton Keynes :D. Also, this picture is another perfect example of motion.

 

Super Powers

It is funny how a total stranger may inspire you, or otherwise.

Yesterday, I had the first session for my ‘Photo Journalism’ course by http://shootexperience.com and one of the first tasks of the day was to learn to break shackles… as in go around talking to people and gain the comfort and confidence to take their picture as they tell you the answer or pose for you.

This was a bit hard for me in the sense that I normally never click people. My family finds that slightly disturbing (because they think they have rights on the camera… don't know why!) and other people perhaps do not notice, or if they do, they just rather not be clicked. I know I rather not be.

On the other hand, I was a bit vary of the fact that approaching a complete stranger, and asking them a random question, with a request that I want their picture taken would be QUITE intruding. Also achieving this with ten people in the space of 45 minutes was a task in itself. Specially since I had already gotten lost in getting to the studio in the morning.

So I thought, first of all, I need to stick to the main road, to avoid getting lost (our trainer had already warned us about a person who had). Secondly, I needed a friendly question. One people would happily answer.

So I thought let us go to the basics… and this was my question for the day:

If you could have one super power… what would it be…

Others did take a bit more intellectual approach, but guess most of them were much better at this than I was.

One person asked around people about the last lie they had told. Another talked about flying in dreams. They also took photos while engaging people in conversation while I did the boring old ‘smile for me’ pictures. Ah well, this is what I am to learn!

But I so loved all the answers that were given to me.

I had a few obvious ones… flying the most popular.

Interestingly, there were a few people who wanted invisibility. And how they posed somehow matched that.

And there was a guy I saw wearing a Superman t-shirt. Ooh how I was pleased to see him on the street :D.

A pretty girl wanted to be able to talk to animals…

One dude, who obviously loved his dog to bits (he had a cute Chihuahua, the ones you see sticking out of Paris Hilton’s purse), wanted to be a dog for a day so he could really hang out with his dog.

The best answer was a photographer I met on the street, and he wanted super genius. Won’t that keep you up at night? I asked! NO! He said! You see, if I have super genius, I would figure out how to do the rest of the things, as in fly and be invisible and brain read and all that. He also said ‘sleep with as many women as possible’ but I did not throw that in!

One answer I got was very lovely, from a couple of young bearded fellows. They actually took the question in a totally wrong way, and I loved it!

They said they wanted the following to be super powers:

Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan.

I would have posted photos, but I will not. Mainly because I respect their privacy and want to thank them for letting me bug them! But if one of you beautiful people does read this, and allows me, I would happily put your picture up, or email it to you :) !!!

Cheerio!

 

Blogging pays

Well not in the conventional manner, where you put up ads and people click and you get money.

And not in the way where you put up a pyramid scheme on your page and you get money.

And not in the way where you put things for sale on your blog and earn some money.

But blogging does pay, because it puts you out there on the internet!

Remember my Shoot London post?

So well as you all know, once through I blogged about it.

Well guess what, somebody from ShootExperience.com emailed me, asking if I would like to do a free course on Photo Journalism if that is something I would like to blog about.

Well HELL YEAH was my response.

I had the first session yesterday, and it is so much more exciting than I anticipated. I will be blogging more about it soon. :D

Twitter pulls… :D

I managed to bag myself a date through twitter the other day, with the lovely Marge Simpson.

This is how it went :D

So there she was, asking Homie to take her to the movies…

And then there I was, wondering how it was going :D

And this is how it proceeded from there…

 

Of course what happened next is none of your business… :D

But here is what happened the next day :D

Because you love me too

I pick up my phone and see your text. Wondering what to say to you, I just smile to myself!

I really want to tell you how much I love you, but I can't! Because I know , that you love me too...

Look what I found…

This is me 10 years ago… last days of college… back in the days of 36mm. In case you are wondering I am second from the bottom… too much teeth, too much nose, not much else… !!! 

For those of you who like my clicks, I just uploaded a few photos on Flickr.

Here is the address… feel free to comment. Flickr most probably won’t be the place I stick to in the long run, but basically just cleaned it out today!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13458425@N08/sets/72157619456853113/

PS… I have shit loads of blogs to write… even though I am writing enough as it is :D

To be or not to be… a genius!

Shakespeare is often quoted to be a genius. And if you believe in good ol’ Doctor Who as much as I do, he definitely was. Not only was he able to figure out that the Doctor was the Doctor, but a lot more too.

But what does that really tell us?

Being a genius is all about being creative. Being imaginative. Being daring enough to think out of the box. Being daring enough to challenge ideas and theories that already exist, and formulating your own. Being a genius, is all about being brave.

Forget what we’re told, before we get too old!

Unfortunately, sometimes the line between story tellers and liars is quite a thin one. Does that make liars genii? Or are they just not focussing their skills in the right direction?

Food for thought I suppose.

Socks MAN !

I know this may sound weird… but I like socks. They are warm… and depending on which ones you wear, can be a sure comfort throughout the day!

Now also, I suppose a few of you know that recently I have been having immense trouble sleeping. Easily go two to three days without sleeping.

So this friend of mine, bless her, who is just finishing off her degree in Psychology, told me that I need to bore myself to sleep.

Now I have a problem. I don’t take kindly to boredom. In fact I do not like people who get bored a lot, because to me essentially that means they are boring because they are too lazy to do anything about boredom.

So this friend, she suggests, I should try and think of socks.

Did not work that.

I started thinking about socks… and what if we put them together to make SOCKS MAN!

A bit like Voltran perhaps? (Do you guys remember Voltran???)

His super powers would include being cuddly, warm, woolly, comforting, and the ability to stink.

What would his weaknesses be?

Any suggestions?

The snooze button

You know the snooze button on the alarms.

I just wonder about it sometimes.

Is it like a little butler/elf/man sitting inside the alarm clock (phone, mobile, radio, whatever!) saying…

Are you ready to wake up or would you like me to come back later?

Are you ready to wake up NOW?

You wanna wake up sire?

aaa… okay!

Wake up already! No? Arryte then!

Wake up? Yes? REALLLY? Oh… knew it was too good to be  true!

Oh great… looks like he slept with his hand on the snooze button! LIFE OF AN ALARM CLOCK!

If that alarm rings one more time I will … oh wait… that is just me!!!

I wonder what life is like for other alarm clocks!

WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UPPPPPPPPPPP !!!! AAAAGGGHHH !!!! UP UP UP!

Feel free to add your suggestions if you want!

Through the internet

You remember in the old days where people would ask So where did you guys meet and everybody would give you a bit of a look if you said oh through the internet.

It is not much of a problem any more these days is it? Most of us these days know at least 10 odd (or a hundred odd) people who they have never met, and just know and communicate through the internet these days.

But these days, there are so many ways to meet up on the internet. Isn’t saying ‘through the internet’ making it a bit too hard. I mean there is Facebook and Messengers, and there are chat rooms (if they still exist), and you have Skype, and then you have blogs, and then you have meetup.com and you have Orkut even.

I think meeting people through the internet is the new ‘in thing’. Gone are the days when two people who met through the internet turned out to be socially inadequate. Though I have to say, some people you meet off the internet do turn out to be.

Me? I have met people through Orkut (as in from net to real life), through Facebook, through Meetup.com, and I am quite friendly with a few people who I have had on my messenger but not really met so far.

How many of you have met people who you found through the internet?

Do you trust them?

Bad Experiences?

Good experiences?