Random Ruminations of My Mind

first there was friendster and linked-in, then naseeb, and of course hi5. now… FACEBOOK!… i finally gave in to another social networking website that seems to be quite popular these days. it was only after a friend sent me an email that said: “I just created an account on Facebook today…and I demand you guys join!!! Hurry…hurry…”… so now i’m on facebook. not sure how long this will last, but i wouldn’t be surprised if in two years people left facebook for another social network. i’m usually quite reluctant to join these websites now because of all the information that’s kept about you. i mean, now these guys know your name, age, the schools you went to, your interests… they know what kind of degree you have, where you work, what you do, not to mention your political views and religious views. so what’s the harm in that you say?… nothing. yet at least. not to sound cynical, but is it not possible for someone somewhere in the world who has an agenda or a vendetta against you… is it not possible for them to use that information against you somehow?… not probable, but still a possibility, no? anyways, just a word of caution i guess. because it is true what they say, information is power… my two cents for the day…

so has it been more than a month?… it doesn’t seem so… things have been pretty busy on my end… some of you may already know, i started a new job a couple of weeks ago… so far so good… i’m pretty much doing the same thing, ie. software developlment. although i’m now learning a whole new programming language. not sure if i really made the right move. the good thing is the work environment. i get in at like 8 now everyday, and leave at 4… basically a 9 to 5 job. the commute is *much* better now - it takes only 20 - 25 minutes each way. whereas before it would take 35-45 minutes… even an hour sometimes. travel time makes a huge difference i’v realized. you not only lose so much time driving, but by the time you get home, u’r mentally and physically tired.

anyways, in other news, the CRA fixed their ’software’ glitch and you can now submit your tax forms online using NETFILE. i personally use a tax program called UFile, which is amazing because it does a lot of optimizations for you, and you can carry forward last years tax file. the software only costs $20 (cheapest of the bunch) and it allows 6 tax filings. i remember not too long ago, my dad used to give some guy $25 per tax filing. talk about a savings! anyhow, i submitted my tax file today, and hopefully, if everything goes good, i’ll get a nice return in the mail in a few days. i think i need a new… ahh screw it… i need to save! for some reason, i feel like i haven’t been doing much of it the last 4 years that i’ve been working. that’s all going to change, right?… prolly not, but it doesn’t hurt to be optimistic

this clip has got to be the funniest thing i’ve seen this year… check it out… for all you people that don’t know who Silverman is, he’s been helping your average, everyday Torontonian with whatever problems they might be facing. In this case, it was probably someone being ripped off by this optician…

http://video.citynews.ca/?skin=oneclip&ext_story=7637

[update] if the above link doesn’t work, you can view the embedded youtube video below…

i’m not feeling very high today… my phone died last night. i paid $400 for a Treo 650, a nice PDA phone, touchscreen, palm OS, etc… and yesterday it died, after 4 good months. so sad. i should be the one to blame tho. here’s what happened:

I forgot to charge my phone the night before, so the battery was dead. Not knowing that, I took my phone to work yesterday and thereafter realized what the problem was. So when I was going home in the evening, I thought “hmm, maybe i should use the car charger to charge up my phone”… even though that very same car charger overheated itself (but not the phone) the last time i used it, i was stupid enough to plug it in again. This time, however, i wasn’t lucky because it seems now that whole charging circuitry is messed up. My phone doesn’t turn on. I tried every single reset method i found online, and still nothing.

So now I think i’m going to have to buy a new phone. The timing couldn’t have been better actually. Get this, my cell phone plan with fido ends March 10, 2007. So that’s like right around the corner. Fido has the worst phones out there. Rogers has some really nice phones like the Sony Ericsson w810i (pictured to the right). Its got a 2.0 MP camera and it syncs with Outlook too. FM Radio, MP3 player, and it looks really slick. Anyways, you might be thinking, ‘but wait, rehan, if you change your carrier from fido to rogers, you’re going to lose your number!’ On the contrary, starting March 14, 2007, cell phone numbers are TOTALLY portable from one carrier to another. So yeah, things couldn’t have worked out better. Well, if my phone was still alive, that would be nice, but whatever. To new beginnings! With a new phone, a new carrier, and a new cell phone plan!

So as most of you (or some at least) know, I went for Hajj this past year, during the winter break. I left on the 22nd of December and returned on January 9, 2007. It was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had in my life. Just standing in front of the Kaa’ba in Makkah, seeing it for the first time, there are no words to describe the emotions that overcame me. You see pictures of it all your life, you pray towards it 5 times a day, but standing in front of it, supplicating to Allah at his doorstep, its just indescribable. I would definitely recommend anyone to go as soon as they have the financial means, especially if you are in your 20s. This way you can truly enjoy the experiences that the Hajj has to offer.

So anyway, as you may have guessed, I took my cameras there also. And yes, i say cameras, plural. I took both my big, heavy SLR with a couple of lenses as well as my point and shoot camera. I probably should have only taken the p&s because there are no cameras allowed inside the mosques. Not really sure why. But a lot of people slipped a camera passed security. Many people also had cameras on their phones. So there were many people taking pictures of the kaa’ba. Admittedly, I also took some pictures with my p&s. I wish I had my SLR with me, because I think they would have come out really well. But my S1 did a decent job as well. I will be posting some of those pictures on my photo blog in the near future. BTW, the picture on the right was taken with my camera phone from the top floor of masjid al-haram in Makkah.

So back to work in a few days. Tuesday that is. Not looking forward to it. Need a little more vacation. Time to think, time to ponder, a little more time to ruminate. So much has happened over the past few days that I feel like I need a some time to reflect, introspect. Prioritize my life, if you will. I dunno…

so i’m in wal-mart the other day and this person hands me this free sample of sunsilk shampoo. and like a typical desi (indian/pakistani/bangladeshi/sri lankan) i can’t refuse anything for free and take this sample home. i get home and take a closer look at this free merchandise i just picked up and notice something peculiarly different about it. something so quaint i have to read it over and over again just to make sure i was reading what i thought i was reading. here, take a look:

and this one too:

So? Notice anything different?!?!? Although it shouldn’t be a surprise to me considering all the ads on TV in hindi from the likes of retailers such as Wal-Mart (and no, i don’t watch any indian shows on TV, my parents do), i still couldn’t yet fathom how the marketing concept behind hair shampoo could be targeting the East Indian community by using the urdu/hindi language!!! It was definitely a first for me and might be for you as well. At the same time, it yet again brings attention to the fact that the East Indian community is growing ever so large within the GTA and is not a segment of the population which anyone can ignore.

More importantly, however, it brings attention to the fact that there is help out there for those desi women who have ‘pak-puf’. You know, that poofy style hair they seem to think is in style not only in Mumbai, Karachi and Dhaka, but all around the world? One word: Anti-Poof!!!

On the news the other day, there was a discussion going on about dual citizenship and how Canada is among the very few countries in the world that allows for such priviledges for its own citizens. This discussion came about due to what recently transpired in the middle east, when israel and lebanon were going at it, and about 50,000 “lebanese-canadians” were trapped in lebanon, waiting to be rescued by the Canadian government. Of those, only about 15,000 were rescued and transported to nearby Cyprus or back to Canada via ferries, chartered airplanes, etc. Total Estimated Cost: $65,000,000. Expensive?… lets do the math… $65,000,000 / 15,000 = $4333.33 per person. Very expensive! Back then, the Canadian governement decided that the burden of this expense would be on the taxpayers (ie. those that live and work within Canada and pay hefty taxes for priveledges like this). So here’s the question: Should Canadians living outside of Canada enjoy the same benefits as tax-paying Canadians living inside of Canada?

At first glance, I’d say no. In fact, I’d say this is an outrage! How dare people benefit from my tax dollars, when they don’t pay a single cent towards the Canadian economy. And what pissed me off further was the fact that of the 15,000 that were rescued, nearly half of them, about 7,000 returned back to Lebanon (as reported by CTV). After thinking about it for a while, however, I started leaning the other way. I started thinking that although Dual Citizenship has some holes in it, its still an important part of what I’d call being Canadian.

Notwithstanding the fact that nearly half the Lebanese returned to their homes in Lebanon, I think Canada made an the right decision in spending what it deemed necessary to rescue the 15,000 or so Canadians. Why? Well, first, I don’t really look at this as a burden on taxpayers for rescuing other Canadians. It was moreso a humanitarian effort to rescue people in need. Second of all, had the Canadian government acted pro-actively, and not reactively, they wouldn’t have had to pay so much for the rescue. i mean, come on, $4300 per person to go one way from Lebanon to Canada?!?!? The government made mistakes initially and so that’s why the bill was out of wack.

Now getting back to the idea of dual citizenship, try to put yourself in their shoes. Say you were working in some foreign land and were in trouble of some sort. Would you not want the same rights and priviledges as other Canadians? What if you worked all your life in Canada, payed every tax dollar owed to the government, and happened to be on vacation in Lebanon? Do you not deserve to be rescued then? Of course, there will always be people who will abuse the system. Like get immigration to Canada, become a citizen and then live abroad, meanwhile enjoying the benefits of being a Canadian citizen. But these cases are few and very rare and revamping the whole Dual citizenship system like some have suggested is a bigger waste of my tax dollar then anything.

Anyways, what are your thoughts?

last night i watched the latest episode of one of the wickedest shows on tv right now- Heroes… it was a great episode… won’t go into any of the details about it since it might spoil it for those who haven’t watched it yet…

anyways, after the show i got to thinking, remembering when i was a kid and something would happen that got me either upset or angry and i wished i had some super powers that would magically make me feel better. for example, making myself or someone else disappear (no i didn’t have violent tendencies)… so i then i thought if i had one super power to choose from any of the the characters on Heroes, what would it be??? i thought about each of the characters in the show and wondered if that would be the best one to have…

first person i considered was Nathan Patrelli, the flying dude… now, would i want to fly really? i don’t think that’s really *enough* of a super-hero power on its own, is it? i mean, take superman for example. he could not only fly, he was faster than a speeding bullet, had x-ray vision, enhanced hearing, and was the man of steel!!! so no, flying is way over-rated… the rocketeer (anyone remember him???) could fly for Pete’s sake!

then there’s peter patrelli, who mimics powers of those who he’s in close proximity with… not bad, not bad… but what good does that do him if no super hero is around?… right?… pass.

next on the list, super-hero STRENGTH, as portrayed by Niki Sanders… yeah sure, it would be nice to have this sort of strength, but there’s baggage that goes along with it, in the case of Niki that is… half the time she doesn’t even know she’s doing it, and therefore has no control over it… so scratch that.

reading people’s mind is an interesting ability i think. Matt Parkman on the show is able to do this. this is something i’ve always wanted to be able to do, until they made a mockery of this power with that stupid movie ‘what women want’… anyways, what good is a mind reader anyway… not so much a ’super-hero’ power i think… the world is full of mind-readers… or people who *think* they can read minds…

getting high on drugs, seeing the future, and drawing it comic book style like Isaac Mendez… again, too many fortune tellers in the world, i’m not into drugs, and i can’t draw if my life depended on it…

now there’s two left… the first is super-healing ability like the cheerleader in the show, Claire Bennet… does that make her invincible?… probably not, but its pretty close. everyone has their ‘Kryptonite’ and i’m sure Claire does too… i dunno, its a close second, but not the power i’d like…

which is, of course, the ability to play with space-time like hiro nakamura!!! is this guy like awesome or what! he can reverse time, stop it completely, travel backwards into the past, forwards in to the future, and the best of all, teleportation! the possibilities are ENDLESS!!… i would consider this power to be invincible against all the other powers *combined*. now only if it were possible…

i haven’t posted anything for 16 days now… just been busy with Ramadan and work. i am on vacation (a mini-vacation really) and have been sick since it started, so i finally got the chance to update the blog. as you can see, changed the theme once more. what else… hmmm..

1. north korea tested a nuclear weapon; welcome to the club. of course, its only fitting a pakistani welcome north korea to the nuclear club, given that Pakistan purportedly gave the communist state the know-how in exchange for missile technology. tsk tsk… what was AQ Khan thinking? dolla dolla bill yall!… haha.

2. the raptors are doing great in pre-season action. 5-0 already. new uniforms, new management, totally NEW PLAYERS!!! this season is going to be something to look forward to with the likes of Bargnani, Graham, Tucker and of course, Bosh and Mo Pete. i think they’ll make the playoffs this season, i really hope they do that is, but i don’t see them moving passed the first round.

3. the leafs aren’t doing that well (3-2-2), which is no surprise really, given that not much changed since last season’s dissapointing finish where the leafs didn’t even make it to the playoffs. the only change i saw was in more ice time given to kyle wellwood, who’s making the most of it with 7 points in 7 games. and congrats to mat sundin on making it to the 500 club. 500 career goals that is. what a way to get your 500th but as an overtime goal. kudos! anyways, first-round playoffs loss for the leafs as well. i’m a little hesitant in even giving them a playoff berth, but that’s just me being an eternally optimistic leaf-fan.

4. i got a message on naseeb (one of those *paying* social networking websites) the other day. here’s an excerpt:

“Also ur pics tell me u have lost some serious weight. Good work. Keep it up!”

… arrrr?!?!?! umm, lose weight? okaaaay. not sure how pictures can tell if someone has lost weight or not but anyway, i don’t really go on that crappy excuse for a website anymore. those guys who run naseeb are making a $hit-load of money off people like you and me. its just too bad i didn’t think of the idea first… sigh. i say everyone just boycott naseeb!

5. tv is going great these days. this new show called ‘heroes’ has not dissapointed at all. on the contrary, its almost my new favorite show. gets interesting with every episode. what *has* been dissapointing, however, is ‘lost’. i’m not sure where they are going with that show. i’m not even sure that they are sure where they want to take it. its gets confusing with every new episode. are they alive? are they dead? who the heck are the others?!?!?!

alright, i’m going back to sleep now. lates…