Ahem... Would be flying at the unearthly hour of three PST, for Bangkok, on a three week training. While I will try my level best to post the latest in my life on this blog, it still isn't a promise. In the meantime, pray for me, that I go and return to this Land of the Pure, with Khair Khairiyat. The job tangles are best left unattended and I reckon three weeks ought to be enough time for me to decide on my career priorities. Still not sure if I would have a job on return erm... :S Hope for nothing but the best then. Ciao!

Oh what a day!

After a sleepless and fitfull night, woke up and called up the DTP partners in BKK, shed off all my worries onto their Thai shoulders and waited for a call. Thankfully my contact in Sydney did call me up and for now the trip seems to be guying...coming.. in the right direction. So I may still be heading off to Bangkok. :D On a not so happy note, and to further cement his b******dly attitude, the HR Manager has a chance meeting with me yesterday when I was going out for lunch. And His Mightiness, in an of hand way, inquired if I had received my appointment letter. Of course, I have revelations, and ilham... anyways, went down and the appt letter turned out to be a slap in my face!!! It had the very terms and conditions that I had objected to and was assured that the delay was only because they were fixing that up! What was I do do except tell them that the conditions were not satisfactory for me and I WILL NOT sign the damn contract and I will go off for 3 weeks, do what you can to stop me! If you can give me hell, so can I :P

:S

Its as if my viscera have turned liquids and are sloshing around inside me whenever if I move, breathe, talk or even think. One fine mess I am in... and have not the slightest clue how to get out of it. :S Umm... does that explain my 'blogger's block' for the moment? Or my ignoring my beloved The Soliloquist. I'd like to kvetch non-stop but then again I am so keyed up at the moment, a bundle of nerves that nothing makes sense... Folks, The Soliloquist, with all her high sounding claims of intelligence unlimted has finally lost it. Oh why oh why did I agree to this situation in the first place? And why is it always my fault?

It's a good thing there was a temporary technical glitch that kept me from pouring the most vicious of outburts here. It was so bad, my desperate situation, that I just wanted to walk out of this place. And never come back. It's that maddening, slowy gnawing at my sanity. But then again, if I don't pour it here, what would I do? Would it were that a recorder recorded each utterance, the people here could surely be taken to the courts. They are that conflicting. One day its one thing and the very second day, nay hour, the statement changes. And it drives me so mad that I feel like crying. Breaking down right here, sitting in this rotten seat at this God forsaken Office. After a shaking off the matter of my leave to go for that Human Right's Training course in Bangkok, today my boss tells me that it would be difficult, so soon after my joining, and in any case I would first have to talk to that HR bastard of a manager. That jerk of the highest order is nowhere to be found. And I can't apply for the visa without a letter that I work in this loser organisation! And it's just a week left for me to take that confirmed flight to BKK. What am I to do. Please pray for me and my limited sanity, I need it, desperately.

This Weekend in my Life

I still can’t believe it. That this Saturday we actually went out and saw Yeh Dil Aap Ka Hua, Javed Shiekh’s, magnum opus. And when I had to share such an important piece of news, my computer went bonkers, kaput, partly, fully that I don’t know nor do I care to. For all I was concerned, I couldn’t update my blog for three days, or was it two? Saturday and Sunday, because I didn’t come to the office and the home story you already know. So Sitara bhabi had to wait. And with so much to write about, it means yet another very long read. Hehe, as if it isn’t always ;) Now what is this about having my brother married off to a star? No, the very Easternly garbed, pajama clad Sana was named Sitara in the flick all ladies of two houses had gone off to see Saturday. Pakistani movies, in our family circles, are not to be seen and once when we had eaten the ears off our Phoophi jan to take us to see Samina Peerzada’s Inteha, she sneaked out with her hubby, watched the movie and came back home in such a dangerous mood that we lost all hopes of seeing a Pakistani flick in the cinema. Such is the reputation of Pakistani movies, the very mention of them is sure to be met with a glacial look form the parents and guardians alike. But this one was a different ball game altogether. Going to a cinema to watch a movie had become something of a joke in our family and even before we took our case to the relevant authorities, we braced ourselves for a refusal. Not this time though, heaven knows if they had seen the movie already and given it a clearance for us to watch, but this time the Phoophi jan was ready to take us to watch just this one, and this meant that Mom would have to yield in too, and that Pa would also not veto it since his own sister fuelled the dangerous fire. And so, we all went off to the Capri cinema, right in front of my sister’s teaching hospital, where Tere Pyaar Mein was also screened but we couldn’t go to see. We bought the tickets and rushed upstairs, were shown our seats and take them we did. We missed the opening scenes where Saleem Sheikh looks breathtakingly handsome as a Bull fighter, (the movie is Spain based), the next three hours just whizzed by as I was captivated by the Sana’s enchanting Eastern charm. Surprise, surprise, there were no moments in the movie that we regretted having brought our moms along. None, can you believe it, in a Pakistani movie!! For those who think it to be too much, I tell this, just three days back I had was dumbstruck as I saw Noor thunder to a number in Shaan directed Daku. What she did in the name of dance I can’t even mention, it was yucky and Goodness know what she was trying to do and Heaven knows what the director had in mind when making such frames!! But this one had nothing of that sort in it, save some unwanted scenes that I suggest were enough for the Arab Sheikhs to take the Pakistani Sheikh to the courts. Moammar Rana dressed up as a woman and cons the sheikh to move to a suite. The sheikh did not look a bit like an Arab, and neither did Moammar look like someone to die for. The tastes of Arabs can’t have been that bad, but so much for a director’s liberty of fiction, a bit far stretched but liberty all the same. The story was nothing to write home about, the songs we had heard and turned a blind ear to, so much had they been played on the TV, the acting was across the border inspired, but boy, did Sana look ravishing! All that she was required to do was look pretty, lip synch and sway to a few songs and deliver five minutes of dialogues in total. But all that was enough, I would like to go to the see the movie again, just to see her magic kindle the screen (my brothers, ever full of vitriol, say that her smile alone took up half the cinema screen and her face is so big that it could only fit on the big screen!). And the end was also an idiot’s delight, as Sana’s brother, Babar Ali, the spoilsport, aims his gun at his errant sister and her love, the Salman Khan naqqal, Momy, his best friend whom only moments earlier was plummeted by the hero for wanting the hand of the winsome lady, fires and kills the big brother. The lady instead of seeing and attending to her brother in the last moments of his life, chooses to stay behind and share the ending honors with the two men. Not enough, here’s the punch line, the hero’s name is Falak, the heroine is of course Sitara and the best friend turned foe turned friend and savior again is Chand!! Ha, a whole constellation, and dialogues to match. Sitara Falak per rehta hei, Chand ko girhan lag bhi jae to rehta who falk per hi hai!! Despite this I wouldn’t say no to seeing it again, the magic of the big screen is undoubtedly addictive. Once seated in the dark gallery we never knew where three hours went by. (I have not been to the cinema, because my family believes the Karachi cine-going crowd makes the place a place that is best stayed away from, save once when we saw Jinnah, that too safely chaperoned by two brothers). This time however the crowd was familial, with more ladies and of good bearings too. An experience not to be forgotten. Our next stop after stepping out of the cinema was the smuggle goods hoard, Gul Plaza. Next we went off to Tariq Road. While we have always been four awara kuris, it was the first time that we were tagged by our mothers and now they ought to know why we are so fond of matar ghushting on Tariq Road. Having left home at ten thirty, we returned at six in the evening, and Pa opening the door greeted us with, Oh, so you have returned after all, we had thought you would come in after closing the cinema after the 9-12 show. Not that we would have minded ;) Next day was a Sunday and since I had stayed back on Saturday, I should have come to the office, but I was in such bad humor, my job contract still not in sight that I didn’t feel like it at all. And so home it was, tucked in bed with Lord of the Rings(I'm near the end). Early morning toady I had a call from the people at University of New South Wales, Australia, asking me of my plans to attend the 13th DTP this February in Bangkok. Well, I can’t think of anything else these days and go there I will, even if it means leaving this job. That reminds me, I have to inquire of the status of my application for a leave. The chances that I get one are slim, so soon after joining(a month and a half), I haven’t even been confirmed in the job yet! Today’s Monday and I am here at work, waiting for all the reporters to come in so that we can have ‘the’ meeting. Not sure if I am being paranoid or if I am really being given a tough time here, but all the time it seems that my presence or absence wouldn’t matter that much. The reporters simply shake me off, and the bosses don’t seem too pleased with me. But then again, I haven’t had any opportunity to prove myself as such. Waiting till such a day dawns. Still.

What to do?

I always took this blog to be a reflection of my state of mind as I typed away an entry, and that ranged from some preachy ones to rosy rhetoric, from vitriol to supine, gloss to personal…it was, in all, what I thought, truth as I saw it, and when I saw it. But yesterday as I talked to an old and learned friend, she tried to inject some cyber wariness in me, trying to convince that revealing, nay, advertising blatantly where and what I do for work (or otherwise), isn’t that great an idea. And I did start having some doubts about my obsession with truth, about my life on the ‘Net. This was despite the fact that I had not for the past few days, written anything personal and kept myself to commenting on what was in news and what should have been and was not. But that wasn’t exactly the aim behind this blog and so, to hell with security and privacy concerns. I have not exercised this degree of freedom of speech and expression ever since I was three. Before that I could cry my heart out, say anything that I wanted to and once school started, I was drilled in what was right to say and what was not, all the while limiting my freedom to speak what was on my mind. But I could think unbridled and that I did with relish, so much so that now I feel more comfortable thinking and talking to myself, thus earning the name Soliloquist, for that is when I have no worry or care in this world of what others may think. But it also means that most of my thoughts remain within the safe confines of my mind and the mankind is deprived of some highly intelligent thoughts ;) All the same, writing is the next best thing that I can do without any restraint whatsoever, but then too, to see it in print means that chunks of it are chucked out in the wider reader interest. So where does that leave me, if I can’t speak my thoughts aloud, not all at least, and can’t write anything without accepting ‘editorial’ changes? Then there is the word limit thing, anything that I write has to be at least 700 plus words, preferably 1000 to be trimmed to 700, and despite my ‘waywordedness’, there are times when I don’t think like writing as much and that is what I love best about blogging, I can write what I want, as much as I want and whenever I want. So there : P And yes, I came across a subscription service yesterday and ever eager to experiment, got myself one. My siblings think that I had no such need as I write/blog on a daily basis and anyone who is interested (snigger) in reading this, may know that as well. And so, all they would have to do is log on each day and read away, there being no need for having inboxes inundated with reminders that there's been a new post on The Soliloquist. I refuse to give in though, so the subscription thing stays, with other things I deem good enough to grace The Soliloquist.

Happy New Year

There are a hundred or more things that I'd like to say as the new year starts. But just for a change, I have decided against even a single negative note. And since I can't think of anything without at least a bit of negativity, I can't think of anything else to post today. Perhaps next day, when the New Year euphoria has settled down and reality sunk back, harsh and bitter as it is, I sit down and pour my daily dose of wahi tabahi. Till then, have a joyous new year and may this happy note mark the whole year ahead of you.

Time to Ponder

And it’s the year end again. Time to ‘past forward’, lie back as the sun sets for the last time in 2002, and reflect on how the year had been for you. On the personal front there hasn’t been much, as all relationships went downhill with an increase in professional responsibilities, appended by an ever growing sense of guilt for not giving enough time to my family. Professionally I reached a landmark as the 2nd of April 2002 marked my first successful year as a journalist. After frustrating administrative hurdles and failed contract renewals, I had to move on and join another publication as Asst. Ed. Apart from the salary package that was offered, the job title also had a nice ring to it and so the shift. It also meant mending spoiled habits and erratic work hours for the more respectable albeit mundane work hours, i.e., 9-5, or in my case 10-6. But that too wasn’t enough to keep me glued to the post and come another opportunity, I jumped in at the chance to work as the section head of a new and exciting TV channel. That was exactly two weeks ago from the year end. So far it hasn’t worked out well, as this blog could testify. Still to settle down, make friends (survival without whom is unthinkable), and win the respect of those around me enough to win a breathing space (the atmosphere is quite stuffy right now)…and most of all, find out what are the terms and conditions of my employment! Idiotic as it may sound, I was so excited to join this place I took a headlong plunge into the unknown, untested waters – without even donning a life jacket and without the slightest idea whatsoever of swimming! And that was three jobs in a year, each move for the better (I hope:)). Globally the happenings have ranged from the bizarre to the most hopeful of times, murders and killings in cold blood, violence, gore, impatience, dogmas, paranoia, and just when you believed that the world was necessarily evil, an innocent child’s charming smile brightened up the day. If God hasn’t given up hope with these species, supposingly Ashraf al Makhlooqat, who are we to pass a judgment on the its hopelessness? Each child that is born into this world signifies God’s love and belief in the Mankind and it is with this belief and the knowledge that God loves me a lot and is forever looking after me that I sit down and look towards the sun on its final journey to the West this year – 2002.