kuch nahin par kuch to hai
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
dammit! i just realized i need this blog up to be able to build the new one.
kinda defeats the purpose of doing not being able to blog while you’re building the new blog.
gahmeh…
so i’ll see if i can incorporate my ideas within wordpress itself first… and if not, starts from scratch.
so firstly, i’m not in pakistan. i’m here.
secondly, i’m here again. what does that mean?
that means i am, once again, thinking of writing a blogging program.
“why would you engage in such madness adnan?”, you ask.
“because madness engages me”, i respond. and i assure you that i’m just as confused by the response as you are.
but in part seriousness… the nature of blogging used to be simpler. if you had a one liner, you’d blog. if you had a link to share, you’d blog. if you had a long piece to write, you’d blog. if you had to rant, you’d blog.
now, we have different tools to do each. i don’t fancy this. twitter for one liners and updates, tumblr for links, blog for long posts… meh. no. it’s too complex, too many logins, too much work. i need simple and minimal.
the blog needs to do all that. while i can just blog the links and updates and what not, the presentation of that information isn’t exactly friendly to the way it is absorbed and consumed. i know what i mean in my mind, so i won’t even explain it.
oddly enough, and as many will attest, it doesn’t get simpler/minimaler than nothing. but i keep coming back. for one reason or another.
if i knew i could stay away, i would. but i can’t. no really, i can’t. i haven’t blogged like this since… since forever.
so, as it were, i am… here… again. hello.
And although this art is so wonderful, still it is held in no honor… The reasons are various, it seems to me; first, the art is concerned with useless matters; second, it is practiced by men of low degree.
i prefer watching movies alone. because it’s easier that way. it makes more sense.
try getting 5 or 6 people together for a movie. schedules have to match, you all have to want to see the movie, have to buy multiple tickets. it’s too much work.
not only that, but when you watch a movie, you just watch the movie. you’re not going to be looking at the people around you, or conversing with them. at least not during the act of watching the movie.
me: “oh, i’m going to see XYZ movie this weekend”
person: “oh yeah, with whom?”
me: “ummm… i’m going alone”
[awkward looks from person]
what? if i want to spend time with people, i’ll sit and talk, go to a restaurant, or even go bowling. if i want to see a movie, i’d rather go alone.
a friend sent a group email this week, wanting to know if we wanted to see The Dark Knight. i’ve been meaning to see Batman Begins for a while. but never really got to it. so this seems like a good excuse. but really, i have nothing against anyone, i’d just prefer to go alone. i’m going this time though. only because i actually really want to catch up on Christian Bale’s Batman, and it’s directed by the director of Memento (which is an awesome movie that you should watch).
the last time i went with a group of people to watch a movie was The Prestige, that was sometime in 2006, over a year ago. and then i went to see it alone. because, you know… i wanted to see the movie. and it was that good (if you haven’t seen it already, you should, why haven’t you?). incidentally Christian Bale was also in The Prestige, Christian Bale is a very good actor(go watch: Equilibrium and The Machinist). the only other time i went to see a movie twice was the matrix reloaded, i couldn’t believe how bad it was, so i went again to make sure. Carrie-Anne Moss was in both the Matrix and Memento. see how all this is connected? there is a greater force at work here.
point is, if i’m watching a movie. the fewer people the better. preferably none (except me).
muahahahahhaah. go watch it, go watch dr. horrible.
brought to you by a lot of the same people who brought us firefly.
apart from all the funnies and goodness, why is something like this “important”. it’s because this is coming to your directly from the director and the actors and the writers etc. directly on the internet, there are no major production companies or networks involved. which i think is awesome.
read more about it here.
i can’t seem to find it anywhere any more. while i was at my previous job i was constantly rotating between honey lemon ginseng and jasmine green tea, both tetley products. that started once i got back from india. in the india office it was either your normal chai or 7up, and i switched between the two. but once i got back, i actively decided to let go of cold drinks and go with just green tea. this was made highly convenient because the coffee machine had a hot water tap.
but where i work now, it’s not so easy. there is no instant boiling water tap. so i need to wait for the water to boil in one of them water boiling devices. it took me a while to bring my mugs to work. i guess that was part of the moving over phase, it took me a long while to bring anything that was really mine to work. the mugs, books, hats etc. i haven’t gone so far as to take the hats and walking stick to work. i’m not that comfortable there.
to top things off, it seems that tetley has decided to stop selling the jasmine green tea. this complicates matters, as much as i like honey lemon ginseng, the smell is not quite jasmine, nor is the taste. i’ve checked multiple stores, with no luck.
the cafeteria three floors up has lipton (i think, not sure) tea. and it’s… awful. i’ve tried the plain green tea and the jasmine green tea… and it’s no good.
i need to find an alternative. a good alternative.
udpate
i tried yaser’s recommendation. it’s not bad, but it’s not green tea. i had lipton’s earl grey from the caf this morning. no milk or sugar, of course. again, not bad, but not quite happening.
i’ll try and hit up numi’s green teas on the way back home today.
emo alert
is everything a mind set? and can you set (or trick/delude) your mind enough to get from it what you want?
there is a contradiction somewhere. i don’t have expectations from other people. i can’t have any, how could i? but from myself? i try not to, but it’s hard sometimes. i work myself into this gridlock, where i create my expectations (loosely based on what i think i can accomplish), but yet somehow i feel i can’t meet them, so i don’t get started. thus the contradiction. and a battle within.
it’s this contradiction, this tug-of-war in my mind, that seems to be distancing myself from the things that i love. where i don’t find myself in the moments i’m in. the motions and reactions are the same, but i am not the same. my actions now seem so selfish, where once they were not. i am different.
with relation to software, i know i’m not in the boat alone. i see so many colleagues in the same situation i find myself in. outer perception and inner reality, and the conflict between the two. i feel slower and dumber than i was 3 years ago. 3 years ago i was practically singlehandedly carrying a team building a major website. now i feel like a shell of my old self. people still see me by what i’ve done in the past, and i can’t seem to get over my reality. i can’t seem to get over my apathy.
i have not really built anything in the last 3 years. i used to build things all the time. without any hope of reward, with no expectations, with nothing. i just did, because i wanted to. purely for the sake of building something. now i know too much. the clutter in my mind prevents me from doing anything real. i know what i have to do. i’ve read and researched everything. i can plan it all out. it’s just the act of doing it. it’s during that act (and i do start) that i convince myself about what i cannot do. again, i’m not alone in this state. this is the state of many many software folk.
haha, i think at some point, i’m afraid. afraid of doing something good, afraid of meeting my own expectations. i’m afraid of something alright…
it’s pretty much the same thing with magic. i am completely out of touch with people i used to know in the magic circle. on the web and in person. haven’t been to the magic shop in ages! even in the moment, i don’t find myself in the moment. everything is the same, i am not.
for the life of me i can’t understand why i would distance myself from the things that i love so much. the things that really do matter.
zen… hah. the first part of my zen was dealing with my surroundings and the expectations i had from others. that was largely a reaction to work. and now the second part has to start, i have to react to myself.
i need to watch more woody allen movies.
So, yes, I took it off. I don’t wear it on my finger anymore. I carry it in my wallet.
It was the only piece of jewelry I was wearing and I suppose it got attention as a result.
It happened at the doctor’s office. It happened when I was playing basketball, and it happened when I was at parties/gatherings. It happened when a political candidate (brown person) was doing door-to-door campaigning and started talking to me about engineering, and how his cousins and nephews are engineers etc etc… which I really don’t need to hear. And some other incidents I care not discuss, and these incidents I really don’t need either.
So really, the ring was serving a completely different purpose (what purpose it was supposed to serve, I don’t know anymore). But it felt too much like, “look at me, i’m engineering”. So as happens in The Lord of The Rings, I destroyed it! Well… not really.
I took it off. And it’s in my wallet.