[Pictures at the end of the Post]

I’ve been in Singapore for a quite a while now, and I’ve had friends over from Pakistan about 2 or 3 times, yet I still hadn’t managed to discover as many places as I did when one of my friend’s sister was over. Maybe because she had quite an amount of energy to drag me about everywhere she could. This obviously is a great experience for me, and I hope it was better for her.

About a day before Christmas, Zohra reached Singapore at about 8pm, I thought I’d go and catch her at the airport, turns out she had already left for her hotel in a cab, and there I was standing at the Airport cursing at myself.

Anyways I called her up and told her I’d meet her at the hotel, and then I took the MRT and went over to her hotel, which by the way wasn’t very familiar to me, maybe because I was lucky enough to have a place to live when I came crashing to Singapore, so obviously being an owner of an iPhone 3G, I flipped out my phone and navigated to that place using the super awesome Google Maps, I just wished I had a 3GS, would’ve made finding the hotel a breeze, oh and did I mention it was right next to “The Cathay” but since I didn’t know I got off a station away and walked to that place.

Anyways, once I was there, and I met her, we decided to hit the streets and catch a movie, since Christmas was next day I thought it’d be better to catch Orchard Road later and see some other stuff instead. So I took her to “The Cathay” to book our tickets to ‘Avatar’, and it was about 45 minutes before the movie would start we headed for Plaza Singapura, where I bought Paras her gift. When we headed out of the mall, Zohra seemed to have seen lights for the first time in her life obvioulsy she has seen Eid Milad-un-Nabi before.. Jokes aside these lights were kind of pretty and alot of things nicer from the back than from the front. They were lighted up from both sides.

Anyways after quite an amount of snapping and begging I finally got her on her feet and dragged her to the MRT since she wanted to expereince that too, so I took her two stations ahead and back so that we don’t miss the movie, oh and about the movie, we saw it in 3d which was a different experience for her.

So the movie wasn’t a short one and we kind of got off late from there, and we were hungry like anything, and she thought I would like some pickle with the food and I thought the same about her. Truth is neither of us were really concerned about it but I didn’t know that and neither did she, so we walked from “The Cathay” to Mustafa Centre at about 3 am.. yes 3 am.. got the pickles and some other stuff, and then got a cab back to her hotel and had some food. At about 6 am I left her to head home and snooze..

Then it was Christmas, even though our plan was to meet early and head off for Sentosa wagera and then see some other stuff before hitting Orchard, turns out we met at around 4pm, and then headed off for Orchard after a little lunch. I realized how much she enjoyed lights here. Kind of snapped everything she could, a sales girl selling some tiny clip caps, which I bought for her, a kid who wanted to take her picture, me as I borrowed a Santa cap from girl near by and pretended to do the yoga thing. The performances there for the Christmas was awesomely amazing, had one been there, they would’ve loved it

Since we were hungry I thought I’ll take her to Al-ameen, which is a funny thing in itself.. I ordered Palak Paneer, which she ordered ‘Nasi Lemak Ayam’ which is basically Plain Rice with chicken, but when it’s served they come with some nuts, a sauce and anchovies.. Now any sane person usually stays away from Anchovies atleast in the desi land, and after these are fried they look more like golden brown fried onions, and thats what she thought until she discovered the fish’s eyes… Yes these things are super tiny Anyways after the food we bid farewell till the next day.

The next day I woke up with her calling me, and asking for the plan, the plan again was Sentosa and stuff, but turns out she had to move stuff from her hotel to a paying guest place, so I headed over to her hotel, grabbed her stuff and headed to her paying guest place, I can tell you one thing for sure, that aunt probably is a murderer just kidding, I m sure she’s a wonderful woman, just looks angry

Anyways she dumped her stuff there, and we moved and went Vivo city at Harbour Front, where she bought quite a few chocolates, and looked at the other awesome stuff, drooled over clothing and shoes, saw some decoration pieces and fell in love with them. Aarghh I had to drag her again, this time we saw some performers at the mall and she immediately flipped out her DSLR and captured a bunch of stuff. We then headed for some other place… blah blah, and at the end since wanted to use some stuff which one of my house mates had, we were back at my place, where she used my room for the night, and I was kicked out of my room haha.. the couch can be a great savior I tell you.

The next day we finally went for Sentosa, but kindof missed the whole thing, the snow city, the science park, where she went crazy with photographs, sadly we lost some stuff too, which I think was very close to her. Oh and did I mention she did the reverse bungee with her eyes closed.. haha.. who does bungee with eyes closed

She stayed the night to my place again, since she forgot the keys at my place, and it was too late, infact we did go to her place only to realize the keys were missing. So we went back, backed up images, which are uploading for her, damn they account for some 7.5 GB :O and then went to sleep. woke her up at 6am, thats when she left for the guest house, so she could fly to Malaysia.

She’s been calling me since she went to Malaysia to ask for random things, and telling me about the infections she got at Langkavi.. girl take care of your health! Please.

Anyways the Christmas weekend for me was really exhausting, but it’s the best weekend I ever had in Singapore yet. So far nothing has beaten that, and yes I would miss her. Had been a great company.

Tags: aunty, bana, discover, dost, friends, fun, guest house, guests, malaysia, science, sentosa, singapore, stay, Zohra

Let’s do a little recap here.. shall we.

I went to Pakistan recently, and had a good time, which included the Tweet up, which I didn’t quite write about. It was one of the best things I attended in Pakistan since the Bloggers meet up. I met some more people, some really awesome ones, took really crazy (birdie poop) pictures, and socialized.

I also got to hang out with awesome folks there the same day (Anum Vighio, Imran Hassan, Umair Khan Jadoon, Taimoor, Sana Saleem, Aly B, Haris Nadeem, Enk, Byte Connector, Ayesha, Salman.. did I miss anyone ?)

Anyways, a few days later, infact the day I had to fly I also pulled out enough time to do a mini interview for CIO Pakistan, I felt good I did that

Anyways once back in Singaland, I had to finish up loads of work that piled up sometime last week, I stayed 3 days at office just to finish up work …. shweeeeeepp…. forward to yesterday.

We went out for fireworks wagera since it was National day here, but sadly reached too late.. anyways I ditched Hamaad and Saad, and went for Reverse Bungi which I enjoyed greatly, really really greatly Had food later, and celebrated Fraz’s birthday.

Also I m still up and haven’t slept yet, and it’s about 7 effin AM… gotta hit the sack now.. later.

Tags: 7am, alyb, anum, balach, bloggers, bungi, byte, CIO Pakistan, enk, friends, fun, hamaad, haris, Imran, national day, Rabia, reverse, saad, salaina, sana, singapore, taimor, Tweet up, Tweople, umair, work

I was thinking of all the things I’ve learned professionally and at what level of capability, some times even considering not to learn, all in the goodness.

A few years back I preferred to freelance rather than take up a job, now I would say I m comfortable with both. When I first started off with jobs, Hassan Sarwar was working at a advertising/web/crap company ‘Dreams Quest’ these guys were looking for a senior web designer, and so I was called in and joined immediately, I wasn’t really impressed by anything there, but just the fact that I’ll be working with a team and a friend. One fo the most important things I learned was that people there sucked big time, no kidding. I ended up quitting the job some time later, and going back to freelance, Hassan had done so earlier than me.

It was quite an experience and I had decided I’ll work with people who consider value of the work that I do.

Again while freelancing, I decided to do my blog, and put it up, Hassan at his new work place opened up this blog, and other guys at the work place noticed it and were pretty impressed ( ), needless to say I was sitting in an interview room again, only this time it was a very cool place to work. I took up the job, and still cherish the time I spent at Creative Chaos. About 9-10 months later I decided I wanted to go and work for a company that had work to do other than the websites. What turns out is that one of my other friends was working in Dubai, UAE, and these guys were looking for artists too, and since I had spread the word I was free, I was in touch with the guys again, before I could leave Creative Chaos, I had 3 more jobs at my disposal. I opted to move to Dubai, not only because it’s nice to see places world wide, but also I wanted to see the place I was born.

What happens here is not something many employers would appreciate but, I left the company (Illusio Pvt Ltd) in a month, due to a strong political influence in the company a plus the crappy political thing they had running in the company, and add bad management to that. While I was going to leave this place I had another offer from a company “Peanut labs” who also wanted me to do their website (which as of now has been screwed to quite an extent) as a freelance project, let’s go back a little on this, while I was in Creative Chaos, I did a website “TimeSvr” as a freelance project, and since the CEO of TimeSvr and another company “Xuqa” which was co-owned by Peanut labs,  was the same, he offered me a job, which I declined since I wanted to go to Dubai. So anyways coming back to where I left from, Peanut labs offered me a job, I decided to take it up (yes good money was involved in that), so I flew back to Pakistan and started off. A few months down the road and a decision is made that the whole Xuqa team and later the Peanut labs tea was being moved to Singapore (WOW going out again ), being in Xuqa, I was moved here first, been enjoying since.

If you’re thinking why I wrote this.. just cause I felt like it

Tags: creative chaos, dream quest, dubai, game ventures, good, illusio, jobs, karachi, office, Pakistan, places, singapore, work, world, xuqa

This weekend was awesome, we crossed borders on foot.. and we shifted our apartment !

Most of the Game Ventures team (except, Siddharth and Pete) went to Malaysia for Lunch. It was at Nandos, ok so why didn’t we have Nandos in Singapore..? Because we don’t freakin have Nandos here :S

So anyways, I had to stay up all Friday night, just so I can wake every other guy, to go to Malaysia, because we had to go at around 12pm, but obviously that didn’t happen, we left at around 1pm.

Since we went to Johor Bahru, which is the nearest to Singapore, it felt like I was in Dubai again. Thankfully it wasn’t Anyways we went to where Nandos is, just to discover it’s no more there. So we then called up Zaki’s friend who told us where the other Nando’s is..

Cutting the crap.. we had the best lunch since we had been to Singapore. Thanks to Ahmed on quite some note, because thats why we came here. Any how, we then left to roam around the city, we ended up to some mall and spent like a lot of time there, and I was like really effed up in the mind.. why because I hadn’t freakin slept

Then later that night, Weng had come, so me, Saad, Zaki, Zulfiqar and Weng went of for dinner while the rest of the guys headed off for Singapore, there we had some Shish, but obviously I didn’t and the light food was awesome which was Saate and some other malay/sing food.

Then Weng dropped up to the Customs at Malay, from there we walked, and walked long, really long, to Singapore, which is awesomeness !

Then we come to Sunday, we shopped kick ass today, lots of stuff since we had to move, and  we went to IKEA, Best Buy, Bess Point, and God know’s where else..

We had the last signing thing happen and then we cooked, or lets say, Fraz and Ali did, and the plan was to make Karahi Chicken, or Biryani, but due to the lack of Na’an, they ended up making Karahi Chawal but it tasted good.. like F**k freakin good !

And now we are sitting are a**es.. going to sleep after doing our accounts

Tags: apartment, food, frakin good, fun, malaysia, move, nandos, shift, singapore, team, travel, walk, week end, xuqa

So I flew back to Singapore on Thursday, 2nd of April at night, and got here in the morning of the 3rd. I wouldn’t say it was the best flight I ever took, but I guess it did the job, I m not going to whine much, since I’ve gone through some really nice things lately.

When I flew back here, there was some work to be done from my side, which had taken me pretty long, and thats because I was on an artist’s block, yeah we artists go through one every now and then.. but as soon as I was here, some sort fo enery blew through me, mostly due to the chnage of environment, and voila I had the thing done and approved, a big smile on my CEO’s face mean’t some good things, and guess what, I got an iMac to work on.. I had been asking for a mac since Jan, so this, came out pretty good.

I was setting up the mac today (4th April) , I noticed there was an extra white (polycarbonate) mac also lying around, I little pooch paach I found out it was our Game designer’s extra mac that was lying at home, and since our Game Dev wanted to use it he had bought this baby to office.. I bet he’s feeling good he did too.. I asked him if he was interested in selling it, and hell yeah, there it was.. I got it off him.. This very post is being written on it The story does not end here mates (if there’s anyone reading that is ) by evening I knew I wanted to go out, but by going out or doing something doesn’t mean eating out, thats not going out and doing things, so our CTO and Game developer thought it’s best to hit the gym, and thats what we did. We stayed there for roughly 30 minutes, but I think thats good enough to get us started back on. I did the cycling for 10 minutes on about 90+ RPM and than Ran for about 5-7 minutes. It’s not that much I know, I just started back on.

Lets hope I can keep it going that way, and ladies and gentlemen, we’re still not done yet, I managed to set up the macs, yes both of them, and still manage to prepare a rough draft of another game we’re working on. Which I plan to be done with atleast the mock ups by Monday Inshallah.

Thats basically it for now. I m going to hit the bed or maybe watch a movie now. Ciao.

Tags: apple, applications, artists block, beautiful, CEO, CTO, cycling, flight, fun, good, graphics, GUI, gym, job, mac, nice, running, singapore, workout

I’ve been enjoying all the good days so far, even though I do get angry during work sometimes, but it all goes away when the final thing is out, the angre is obvioulsy just so that the right thing comes out.

I’ve been in Singapore for quite some time now, but honestly haven’t really gone some place thats like an outing, dont’ count eating out to be outing. Oh and I’ve had sushi and crabs here, tasted awesome.

I’ve also had some desi food, but obvioulsy I m always trying out newer but halal food.

Today, we had newer tables arrive at work, and boy these are some awesome tables, we had got the awesome chairs a day or two bck, and these awesome tables just add it awesome !

I m also woring on the UI of a facebook app for my current employer, and so far it has turned out nicely, I hope it turns out to be a hit

Also I’ve finally started using Google Docs, and other web apps.

Tags: dishum, enjoy, singapore, ui, work

It’s been a couple of days since I’ve been staying in Singapore, and I’ve been eating out mostly, haven’t had a single meal that was made at home, and it’s fine right now, since we dont have enough material to cook right now, but anyhow, the food had been good so far, until we decided we’d eat something else today.

Today ofcourse was different, we didnt’ have burgers for a change, we didn’t eat desi meal either like we use to in Dubai, but instead we ate some chinese food, which is ok, kind of bareable but not really awesome food honestly, and had to actually fight the food a bit

Had a fun time though.

I m not sure what we’re going to eat now for dinner, we’re having a fun time working.

There’s this guy at work, FSJ, who does kick ass punches, which he calls combo. So far didn’t really get any of those, and I dont plan on getting any either.

Tags: chinese, desi, enjoy, food, shisha, singapore, work

Hi everyone, I m a little excited, and happy to tell you about some things.

I landed here yesterday, and the airport and my apartment is like two different ends, so me and the other guy that flew with me took a cab and went to the MRT station, our apartment is near to that, our CEO and CTO came by, picked us up and took us to our apartment, which is awesome, no kidding.. It’s a condo, and on the 13th floor. It’s airy and super cool.

I m missing my family and m lady, I wish they were here to see this. It’s beautiful. And did I tell you that, it’s a home office kind of thing. Yeah since the apartment is pretty big, we decided that we’ll make it part office.

We had a light breakfast today, but I m hoping for a really heavy meal now

Oh and the downside, we got to use toilet paper, instead of water haha !

Tags: office, residence, singapore, yo

Yep, The place I’ve been working for quite some time, wants me to join at their office in Singapore, so as much as I m excited, I m also a a bit sad, ask me the reason, and I’ll tell you that I m going to be missing my family a lot.

This is not the one month deal like the last time I went to Dubai, UAE, put it simply, Dubai is more of an advertising/Print based work, while the place I m flying off to now is more of game development/web based work. So as far as work is concerned I m excited, I m also excited to be flying out of my motherland, and exploring newer places, but again, I have my family members, friends and relatives here, and obviously this is where my heart is.

One of the reasons that I m also happy to fly to Singapore is that it’s a smoke free zone, kind of, you’re not allowed to smoke on public places, that only leaves out your living place to be a smoke allowed area, and smoking is kind of expensive for those who want to smoke. SG$ 54. Woohoo.

I m going to be buying lots of chewing gums for myself from here though. Yippee.

Tags: artwork, away, development, fly, game, singapore, smoke free, travel, we, work