and then

and then there was silence...........

lost i am

once there was respite from the struggle

a hope i had of peace and calm

illusions, visions, hallucinations

nothing was there in reality

sometimes i wish memories to fade

haunted i remain to a present of the past

a soul pricked while picking my shatered self

a wound i heal no one can tell

at nights alone i cry without sleep

the dream i dreamed i dream no more

leave me and let me be

i am but lost for now it seems

will find my path i just need my time

my future i'll build just wait and see

blabber

and im back to my routine , my normal routine which is anythingy but normal, after 3 weeks im sitting on my desk in my office. not moving around , not working from the other office, not in another city but back in lahore.

and im still tired , there are 1236 unread emails in my inbox, waiting for me to grace them but i like the saying of a guy i worked with last year, he said " If they want me to do somethingy important , they will mail again" , so im kinda working on his principles right now

im gonna work another day.................

pool

Ok so this be the pool and sheesha ,

the fun part being , you can breath while sitting in the water through a sheesha and enjoy quality time inside water while sucessfully deminishing your stamina

I think i would go to khi soon again , or not , lets see

stone deaf

and day before yesterday the temperature was 42 in khi, i was not looking forward to drop in khi plus had no plans for coming to khi when i left lhr on sunday. It was just 2 day trip , give a presentation on tuesday and return the same night or wed morning to lhr plan.
On monday i get call from my team in khi, asking me when i am planning to come ot khi, im like perhaps next week, soon ( like ive been saying past 3 months , soon). So the guy is like come on 11th and you can attend the motoalert mtv concert.
So i say i will think , and on wednesday morning i end up at isb airport to head out to khi.

Funny thingy is, i now know first hand why PIA was banned, like the plane takes off and i go deaf, and when we land i go deaffer. and through out the flight i keep trying to yawn to get my ears to open, im sure i must have been making interesting faces throughout the flight.

So i land and i get a call from the guy who was to pick me up, i pick up, tell him "lemme sms you" and closed the phone, he must have thought i was in some other call or somethingy. Truth be told, if the phone was not on vibrator i would not have been able to tell it was rining, and secondly all i can hear was this wind in my ears when i tilted my hear left and stone deaf when i kept it stright.

So conversing through texts i got picked up, checked in to the hotel, kept guessing what the guy at the reception was asking for , usually the sequence is " Visiting card, sign form, credit card , and thank you" im sure i walked off pretty arrogant snob in the guys view.

So after 3 hours of forced yawning and making strange faces, i was able to comprehend what others were saying when in 5 feet radius around me

The best thingy about Khi office is , like my departments office i.e , in the evening i can sit in the pool, have a cup of coffee beside and have a sheesha. I should come to khi more often i think

So by 9 we went to the otoalert concert, anoushe and faizan were the only ppl apart from the organizer crew at the time, time printed on cinvitation cards was 7, by 10:30 it started , first off an intro video was run of what motoalert is , and then a guy called ali khan sang 3 songs, aparently ive been out of touch with local music it seems, never heard the guy before & never heard of the guy as well. next came Haroon, he should NOT sing anymore, the guy sucked majorly by the time due to extremly high base my ears were opening up a bit.

So after 6 songs, ( i was informed that each person before the main item would do 3 songs only ), and dreadfully elongating our misery he finally left and the band for whom all the evening was planned came on stage. Strings. Strings were named brand ambassador for Motorola for 2007 and 2008 the very evening and then they stormed the show.

One word , AMAZING, Bilal also performed" Sar Kiey" as a dedication to MTV.
All and all we had fun in that performance afterwords food, finger fish was tasty, and then i headed out to marriot,

and now i know there is a huge speed breaker on sea view road which has no indication before hand , thus i should not go beyond 100, not good for the shocks of the car.

by 1 i was back in my hotel and when i was turning off the lights around 1:30 , a real yawn resulted in finaly having my ears work normally,

now i think i should ask my team to retell their issues once more.

status

im tired, very tired

wait

The setting sun beyond the hills had left an amber glow on the clouds. The valley below was already slowly engulfing in dark. He sat by the side of the lake. Quiet as the water, water which was dark without a sun to shine on. He had already started a small fire to keep him warm in the chilly air. This wasnt his first night in this wilderness nor it would be his last he suspected. "Go there, Go alone and wait" that was all that was written on the piece of paper he had in his hand, he would take this paper out of his pokect and reread it countless times a day. Reading it once more, the neatly folded the paper and returned it to his pocket.

"Go there , Go alone and wait", all the communication he had in past few years from them, and all he get is this piece of paper with this one line. There was no mistaking the place, and the instruction to go alone was nothing suprising, but wait for what? and wait how long? why now after all these years?

This place had significance in his life, so far away from civilization, it had taken him 2 days to hike to this lake. This wasnt the first time he had spend time here, and this wasnt his first time he was without a clue as to what to expect. But still not knowing always made him restless. Taking a pack of cigarettes out and counted how many were left, he would soon run out of his supply of cigarettes he brought with him, he decided against smoking one now.

Food was plenty in this area, fish from the lake, and small rabbits in surrounding forest were easy to catch, even fruits were easy to find, and the spring for drinking water was not far from the cave he used at nights. Lifting his bottle to his lips we gulped down the last remaining water in it. He would need to get more water before he starts his dinner. Dinner today consisted of a small rabbit and he still had a can of baked beans to force it down with. After gutting the rabit and putting in on a spot to roast he picked up his bottle, pulled his shotgun over the shoulder and head out towards the spring.

Filling up his bottle it was then that he noticed the silence around him. He has lived a lifetime in woods and if to someone living in a city the forest was quiet to him it was full of noise, insects , owls even bats , a forest was more alive at night that it was in the day time. But now he could hear nothing, not even crickets. Instinctively he crept into the shadows of the trees and tried to look in all directions at once.

There was something moving just beyond the sight deeper in the forest in front of him, he caught flickers now and then, whatever it was , it was fast, as if someone was running blindly in the dark, running without care to where it would lead just to run from whatever was behind it. A few more yards and the object step out in the clearing around the spring, in moonlight he could see that it was a man, torn clothes, messed hair, the guy hadnt shaved in ages, his features were burried behind layers of dust, just hollow eyes stared out of darkness, casting a fearful glance back at the forest the man stepped into the spring , to wade accross.

Right at that time, another shadow of a man hurled itself on the man, and the two fell crashing into the spring. And then began the strangest fight he had ever seen between two men, both went at each other tearing away, snatching, both looked same to him , torn clothes, long hair, unshaved dirty faces, but now there was a glow in each mans eye, a glow that screamed murder at the other person.

Wordlessly they kept fighting , hitting, throwing, kicking, even biting if they got the chance. intensity in each mans movement reminded him of wild animals, he continued watching from his position, waiting for an outcome. Then one man managed to throw the other in the water, it was impossible to tell which was which now, the guy who was running or the one who was pursuing. As soon as the man had thrown his opponent in water he picked up a rock and started smashing it on the head of the other. If there was more light, he even from this distance would have been able to see the color changing in the water as blood mixed into it. The man kept on smashing the rock for a while and then dropped beside the now dead body , exhausted.

Alot of time passed before the man moved again and climbed out of the spring on his side of the stream. It was then that he noticed that it was the same person who came out first in the clearing. The man sat down heavily on the bank and began to examine his wounds, some were bleeding and some were just straches. There were few teeth marks on his hands as well from where the other man had been biting him.

He still stayed in his position and observed the other man. He was still deciding if he should approach the other man when the stranger got up and started dragging himself onwards towards the lake. He started to follow him slowly not letting the other person suspect he was there. The stranger changed his direction towards where the cave lay hidden from unsuspecting eye behind bushes. Reaching the bushes he took out an envelope and held it high above his head before falling down.

Rushing towards the stranger his mind were kindled by a million question, who was the stranger, why was he here in front of this cave, and why , why did he have that envelope with that symbol, that symbol which was so much tangled with his own life, was this the person he was sent to wait for ? should have he helped the person before? but how could he have known ?
When he reached the person, he was too late, the stranger was no breathing anymore, his hand still tighly gripped the envelope , there was no mistaking about it, it was the same as he had got, the same symbol, the same texture.

He forced the envelope out of his death grip, careful as not to tear it. He huridly opened it and turn it upside down. A small piece of paper fell on his lap, picking it up he noticed it was folded neatly, he opened it and in it was written one single line

"Go there, Go alone and wait"

wormholes

so last night i decided to go home early and ended up turning the key in the front door ar 12:40am. By 1am i had changed and i decided to play that game "crackdown" i bought the previous day since i could not play it due to batteries on my controller dying out. So like i play for 20mins and then i get up and reach the bed. Somewhere in between i enter a wormhole and when i get out and sit on the bed its 3:30am, its a mystery i swear

So after a sleepless night which i only spent tossing and turning, i refused to go to office early, reached around 11:45am, and next thingy i know is that its already time for the customer meetign at 2:00 and i havent had any lunch yet.So its 4:30 now , meetings done with and i still am hungry.

Went pretty well, the meeting i mean, the customer was in a very good mood and only bashed us every second line not on every line of the presentation, i for one had a good time. The poor guy who was supstituting for the planning lead (on leave for his suicide from today), so this was his first meeting , and poor kid, he was soo tense throughout, while i was kinda relaxing and enjoying my coffee, which tasted not good though, but i needed somethingy to keep awake.
So turns out we have a follow-up meeting on monday, the fun part was , we didnt even go through the whole presentation and i didnt get to present my project plan at all. So now till monday i can rest.

I think i should aim to go home late today, then perhaps i would be back by 10pm. would suit me just fine. I think

Sleep i want

Last night i tried sleeping early at 2am, cause the cells on my wireless controler died and the new game i bought i didnt get to play. So the previous night i was traveling back to Lahore, again that 6-1/2 hour journey back which resulting in hurting my back more than it already was. Reached Lahore at 7:30am, and was in office by 10. Left office early around 8pm and was home by 9. Everyone thought i was sick to be back so early. Just told them i wanted to get some sleep.
Which brings us back to my trying to sleep early, so when powered up my 360, and started playing , the controller died on me, then is when i decided i should sleep early. so by 2:15am lights were out and i was in bed eyes closed. The thingy is, i think i have forgotten how to sleep early, kept tossing and turning all the while, and when i finally got to sleep it was around 8am, from 8 till 9 i slept peacefully, and at 9 my whole dream state was vibrated out of existance as a text with "Good Morning" in the body was received, i think i havent replied to that text yet.

So my eyes were hurting by that time, and i had a meeting at 11:30am with the customer for which i needed to be in office max by 11:00, so got there in time, went to customer, only to find out that the meeting is postponed till evening, came back to office, and 4 hours, 3 conference calls and a heavy lunch later im sitting and thinking i dont wanna work. I havent even started outlook yet to downloaded my emails, and my back has started hurting again.

There is an interesting history of my back, goes 10 years back in time. It was summer and i was off on my Fsc holidays, So there at home one night , we all cousins 3 same age, 4 around 2 to 3 years younger, we decided to play football inside the room. Like our home was one of those old homes with high ceilings (15ft) and wide walls ( 6feet thick) and huge rooms, so this room, the one named "lamba Kamra", we started playing football, and in the process i twisted my left foot anckle, so game ended after 10 mins of its start.

Next day i was in the courtyard, and there is a big Shahtoot tree in the back garden, and it was Shatoot season, and im sitting there and i decide i need to eat those shahtoots, So this tree is huge, the lowest branch starts from 14ft or 15ft and then it goes up. So in my current state with a twisted ankle is was not possible that i would be climbing the tree, so i decided to use the brain which normaly is rotting away and brought the ladder. This was a bamboo ladder, huge, longest in house 18 or so feet, so i placed it beside the tree at a nice angle and slow and steadily started moving up.

Now when only 3 more steps were left, i heard a cracking sound, and an instant later i had those 3 steps hanging in my hands and the ladder below me was there no more. And just like in cartoons , i had a split second reaction "oh O" and then i was falling, the next thingy i remember is a hard thump on my back and all wind being knocked out of mE, and for a while i could not breath. I was on the ground facing up, my hands spread on my sides. Finally i managed to turn and lift myself in Sajda postion and then i could breath. By that time Ammi had who was in Kitchen and had heard the crash came and found mE in there, called my cousins and i was carried in. I got my color back from intense white in 4 hours and i was breathing normal again and was able to walk around. The place i fell, it was soft ground from rain the previous night, and there were 3 bricks present between my chest and my open arm, if i had just fallen a few inches right, it would definately have broken somethingy. So ever since that day, my back sometimes starts acting up.

Its almost 5pm now, i still havent started anywork, the meeting has been postponed to tomorrow second half. My planning guy who was to give the presentation is going on leave tonight. His social suicide is planned for this weekend. I might be able to attend his vamila on sunday in Isb if im there. 3 More ppl from my staff would be on similar leaves in the coming few weeks.

The point being, now i think i would need to talk more on the presentation. I be sooo not looking forward to it.
I think i would go to CTC now, for a coffee, then when i return, there are 2 more conference calls to cater for, i think i will check my emails then, or not havent made up my mind yet.

weekend cometh

A long weekend is upon Pakistan, a most welcome break from the evil cluthes of work.

Home i be heading tonight.

I do hate the 6-1/2 hour bus ride to home, it totally destroys my back, those damned seats are NOT comfortable at ALL. Imagine sitting in a bus for 6-1/2, like once i thought that enough is enough, and started going on those fokker flights, would take me 2 hours, that was bliss, yet expensive , they charge a one way 4k form Lhr to Pesh. And then they stopped the fokker flights after the crash in Multan, so back to 6-1/2 hour drive. Then they started those new ATR flights, new planes, small as a fokker, maybe 2 inches longer. Ticket went up 1k. so took that once. then one day i needed to get back to lahore in a hurry, so booked a flight, this is around 6 months back, so that day their was too much rain the flight was canceled, anyway, again after a few weeks i thought why not utilize the ticket, i call em up , get a booking done, and i reach the airport , flight canceled again. 3rd time same thingy happens, 4th time after 2 months i decide to again try it out, i get the flight , get on the plane, it takes off, 15 mins to landing "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, due to heavy fog in Lahore, we would be taking this flight back to Peshawar". so i call home,Abbu: "Reached safely" ? mE: "Yup, safely back in Pesh, tell my lil bro to come pick mE up" So after 5 tried on the same ticket ive decided that that ticket is jinxed, so i will be returning it , but im too lazy for that , maybe i will give it a shot one more time.

This reminds me of another incident not so long ago with PIA, i believe it was Nov 2004, me and a couple of my colleagues had gone to Khi for work, we spent there around 2 weeks, in which our work routine was chaos, we would get up at 9 in the morning and reach the hotel back at 3 or 4 on the next morning and would again start at 9 next day, for two weeks without even weekends we worked, on a sunday we got a flight back home, it was around 6pm, that flight which reaches Lhr by 8:30. So anyway, we are waiting in the lounge and we see the Customer regional manager walking in and i say to my two other colleagues "You better pray before we board this flight, like this guy has gotten soo many bad wishes from others specialy us in the last 2 weeks and he is onwith us ". So we board the plan and im extremly exhausted and i dont wait for even the plan to taxi before i sleep, a while later the colleague sitting next to me shakes me up "listen the plane is making noises", im like "Butt sab, it just the sound engines make when they are working , now please let me sleep" , he has fear of flying so i didnt pay any attention. And then started the turbulence, we are only 30 mins after take off, and some serious shaking starts, meanwhile this guy keeps interupting me that plan is making weird noises. And then there is an annoucement "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, due to some techinical dificulties we are going to turn back and try to land in Karachi"...and i sprang up, looked at my colleague and ask him "did he just say TRY to?? as in TRY to land back??" and then the real turbulance started , anyway, after another 30 mins we safely landed back , as soon as we touched down, there came clapping from the back side of the plane. like imense intense clapping, and we were like "emotional Pakistani bhai ", later when we went to the lounge the other colleague who was sitting back told us that out of the two engines , the left one had fire and smoke coming out of it, that is why there was that clapping done when we touched ground. We left in the same plane 3 hours later.

Did i mention how umcomfy this journey i nthe bus ride is ? i did ? well it is, it is. its 4am now, around 7am i will reach my destination, so far the two aunties sitting behind me have dicussed and shared some intense 'facts' about certain fishy relationships in all of their relatives and associates with half of the bus in their 'low' voices. The writer from bold and beautiful would have been ashamed of his plays if he had been here. The guys on the seat next are marveling at the bus service and how it is catching up on the late departure and how greatly we are progressing in infrastucture, motorway should be worshiped, the hostess has made it a point of bumping into my shoulder whenever she is passing so that my half alseep mind is jerked back to reality every 5 mins,like its not my fault that i have broad shoulders is it? . Thank God there is no kid on the bus tonight who will cry the hell out all the 6 odd hours.

And i be home now, its around 8:40am, and now i am gonna hit the bed. Sweet dreams,