Category: general

For the longest time I used the normal default ringtone on my cell. I like my gadgets, but I’m not a gadget freak, I don’t soup up my mp3 player or cell phone in anyway. And up until now didn’t even think about changing my ringtone.

Now that I have decided to make the move, there are a number of tunes I have to choose from. I’ve cut out the bits of music from my mp3 collection. These are the first 8 tunes, I didn’t narrow down to these, they’re simply the first ones I’ve started with. But these will do for now… ah, but which one of these? Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Don Theme [Listen]
2. Dhoom Theme [Listen]
3. Roobaroo from Rang De Basanti [Listen] – Note: includes vocals
4. Kehdu Tumhe from Deewar [Listen]
5. Main Yahaan Hoon from Veer-Zaara[Listen] – Note: includes vocals
6. Yuhi Chala from Swades [Listen]
7. Tere Liye from Veer-Zaara [Listen]
8. Kehdu Tumhe (start) from Deewar [Listen]

Can’t really seem to put my finger on any one of these…

how much is a laugh worth? what is the price of a smile?

It’s funny, sometimes I just despise the sound of laughter. There are moments where it makes my ears uncomfortable. And on the other side of the coin, there are moments where I can’t get enough of that sound, where it becomes contagious and energizes everyone around.

Wierd.

“laziness is the key to avoiding bad habits”, a funny looking man once said.

I know myself to be one of the laziest people I know. With plenty of bad habits to boot.

I’m one of those people that would just stay home instead of going out, due to sheer laziness. Take weeks to get certain tasks done (mowing the lawn). Being late for or missing lectures back when I was at school, and a host of others things, a list too long to mention.

But I want to change that, and I’m taking steps to do so. Albeit slow steps.

The will to change was triggered mainly by two things: magic and certain events and situations at work.

Things I’ve started to do (or stopped doing):

1. Stopped playing poker at lunch. What a great decision. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but given that I started the whole lunch poker thing at work, usually gathered people to play, dealt pretty much every hand and played probably over 85% of the games played in the last two years. You tend to get associated with it. I’m very glad to disassociate myself from that.

2. Waking up early and getting to work at 8am. Here’s another big one for me. I had gotten into a state where I was getting late and inconsistent with my waking up patterns (sleeping patterns is a whole different issue). Now I have my alarm set to 6am, and I’ve come to a point where I automatically wake up at 5:45am, then I wait for the alarm to go off.

3. Started Jogging. Something I haven’t done regularly since high-school (5 years ago), and that too only during gym class. Ramadan/fasting has but a break to that, I only started the week before Ramadan. I had started jogging 4km each day for about half an hour. I’m definately going to re-start that once fasting is over.

4. Squash. Great physical activity, lots of fun. Right now only playing once a week, and it’s only been three weeks. And this was something I didn’t want to but a break to due to Ramadan. I knew that if I stopped playing for a month, I would get too lazy to start again. But once Ramadan is over, I’m going to get a membership to the gym so that I can play more than once a week.

5. Stopped doing magic at work. Hmmm… not sure this was a good thing. I haven’t done much magic for over a month (work or otherwise), but I would never consider giving up magic. I love it way too much. Not doing magic for a month has got me fallen into a rut in that regard. I don’t like not doing magic. But more about magic in later blog entries.

Things I want to do:

1. Learn the guitar. I know I can’t sing for beans, but the abililty to create something pleasant to the ears is very appealling. I want to be able to play a few Cat Steven songs, the Filefly theme song, and more importantly I want to be able to play the music of my favourite Hindi songs on a guitar (even if the songs don’t use a guitar). If I can do magic, I should be able to learn how to play a guitar. But we’ll see how that goes.

2. Learn Spanish. I never thought I’d ever be interested in learning a different language. But why now? and why Spanish of all languages? There is a decent amount of magic literature in Spanish. It’s not just about the “tricks”, it’s about the beauty of magic. I would love to read those books. (I did say magic had a lot to do with my will to change).

3. Pick up table tennis again. It’s been over 8 months since I last played with any regularity. I want to get started again.

4. Stop talking so much, and listen more. This is a difficult one. But something I’ve started to work on. I don’t say much of meaning for a person who talks so much. What I absolutely hate is when I interrupt others. It’s plain rude. At least I’m aware of it, hopefully I can condition myself to talk less and not speak out of turn.

Not that any of the above really give a point or much meaning to my life. I’m still looking for that, or waiting for it to come.

But either way, here’s to self improvement.

I’ve taken most of the quotes from my old quotes page and moved them over into the Quotes category here.

I left out the ones I felt were too cheesy. I’m going to leave them there on the original page though.

It truely is a shame, I come up with these sayings say on a train or in a conversation, and I forget a lot of them. I think to myself, “That’s definately one for the quotes page”. But when I get to the keyboard to type it out, it totally skips my mind. Perhaps I should get a voice recorder.

I just hope the words incite some form of emotion for those that read them.

Yet once again.

Originally I had wanted to develop my own blogging software and use that to blog. But I eventually gave up that thought once I realized the amount of planning that would be required to build it. I’m not giving up on the idea of building the software though, I’ve started the planning part of it. [Framework Planning]. In the meanwhile I can use this to blog, because I have quite the bit on my head right now, and even more inside.

Back to the blogging part. What will I blog about? Hmmm… mainly about myself. Let’s be honest here, I’m not at all knowledgeable about politics, literature and all that other stuff that makes people sound important. (Infact, I had to use spell check to get the word ‘knowledgeable’ correct). I can’t pretend to be an expert on something/anything, but I think I know my thoughts and opinions fairly well.

Even though I will blog mainly about myself and things that happen around me and in my head, I won’t be posting anything too personal or private. This will be like a public diary of sorts. I wonder why people keep private diaries anyway? What’s the point of having a private diary? I already know all my private details.

Hopefully I won’t abandon blogging this time around, but we’ll see how that goes.

Haven’t been here in a while. And if you’re reading this neither have you.

But I just had to post this. The Raptors have finally won a game this season. This is exciting news. We beat Miami, who coming into this game were 6-3 (comparing in percentages, they were winning about an infinite more games than we were).

Dwayne Wade was awesome. After picking up a technical, he simply took over the next 3-5 possesions. But luckily with Jose Calderon’s excellent ability to distribute the ball, we were able to get some great looks, and “seal the deal”.

With the youth on this team, there is hope for the future. And that’s something we didn’t have with Vince Carter and Antonio Davis on this team.

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I almost forgot my login details for this blog. Reminds me of the time I forgot my student number while trying to sign up for courses (but I’m saving that for another post).

Don’t be afraid of messing up, just don’t mess up.

Yesterday is ancient, and today is getting old really fast…

Parineeta, now that was a wonderful movie.

“But Adnan, Parineeta is a love story! I thought you liked mystery and mind-bending movies??”, you might think just as others have.

Yes Parineeta is a love story. But the director and the cast were able to turn the story into a very good movie. Infact, Parineeta demonstrates that there are great movies that come from Indian Cinema.

It’s a fabulous movie. Watch it!

Between the time I got laid off and the time school starts I’ve been watching a lot of television. I haven’t really watched TV for a very long time. Months.

What annoys me a lot about television are all the commercials. Some are clever, and funny. Most are just boring. Not to mention the sheer number of times they’re played over and over. It is annoying.

Beer commercials seem to be of the best of the lot. This person will one moment be rock climbing, and once he gets to the top the scene will cut to a shot of a beer bottle. Funny, I could have sworn it was a harness commercial. Does the word ‘drink’ have a bad connotation? Perhaps that’s why it’s “Enjoy responsibly” now. Geico of course wins in that department. The commercial has absolutely nothing to do with car insurance, but it’s funny.

The Kia advert, the one where the guy nervously drives to and enters his house, only to have 5 or 6 arrows hit the door as soon as he closes it. I can’t get enough of that one. Kia cars might be crap, but they have one hell of a commercial.

The juicy fruit commercials are awful. Mountain Dew commercials are in the same club. Sometimes these adverts work against you I suppose. If the product is bad and the commercial sucks, then I won’t eat it, drink it, or put it in my dryer. Unless of course it’s free, or stolen.

Repitition is annoying. I think I’ve already stated that. What companies need to do is make variations of the commercial and play each variation in each commercial break. That way they increase their chances of me taking note of the commercial. Cheers to Geico on this one as well.

I often just change the channel, but risk losing part of the TV show that I was watching. How annoying.

Another pet peeve are the shaving blade commercials. Dude’s alone in the washroom, applying this shaving cream, and then proceeds to scrape his cheeks with the multi-layered and cushioned blades. He washes this face and when he’s done he turns around and there’s always a stunningly good looking female there to feel his cheeks with the back of her hand. Lucky him. I recall a commercial where the guy was in some sort of zero gravity machine, or in outer space, and still there was a woman there to feel up his cheeks. Lucky him. I don’t shave with a blade now, but when I did there was no one there. It’s a lie. All a plot to make us buy shaving cream and blades. I’m just bitter, very bitter.

The point of this entry is that good commercials are good, and bad ones are bad. We need more good ones.