Facebook's Little Gift

I love this application, Graffiti on Facebook and that's all I feel like saying right now!

But, being the talkative person that I am, I now feel like saying more about it... Well, the application is simply great chiefly because of its simplicity. We have just three parameters to work with. Colours; 180 shades to choose from, Brush size and Brush's transparency and viola there you go! :)

One sweet part about is that once you're done you can press the 'play' button and see your graffiti by an invisible hand ... Basically it fast forwards your drawing session.

So if you are one of the artistic ones, do try this ... Happy Graffiti-ing :)

(one of my few random creations)

Bluey Blue

It’s blue. Dark depressing blue.

I can see blue, I can hear blue.

I can smell blue and taste blue.

Since, when did I start feeling blue?

It makes me float around as if I were nothing but merely a shadow of a human’s existence. It makes me stand in front of the mirror and stare at the stranger at the other side. It makes me gaze at strangers walking past by and yet lets me see nothing but itself.

It makes me feel like a dead soul in a live body.

It rejoices on my numbness, on my restlessness, on my hopelessness.

Then, it does something terribly cruel. It leaves me alone for a while, to let me live again… for a few cheerful hours, with a few good old friends, until the time it can come back to me and grab me again, let me feel the fresh pang of the numbness again.

Oh blue, I hate you!

Oh Please! Don’t Give Me Pepsi when I ask you for Coke!

I was no older than seven when it happened but I remember it pretty clearly still. I and my family were shopping in this open-air bazaar in Sharjah and though it was night-time, the air was hot and humid like it always is. So, naturally we felt thirsty at some point in time and thought of having cold drinks. Walking along the pavement, we almost ran towards the first chiller we spotted and started exchanging coins for cans. Once my dad quenched his thirst he said something like… Pepsi is just too sweet, wish Cocacola’s chiller was somewhere near.

Thirteen years later, in Pakistan…

I had to get a drink with my doughnuts and munchkins and asked the Dunkin’ Donuts man for a Fanta and he gave me a Miranda! And I was almost about to return it back to him but then I told myself not to be that … well, choosy.

But actually it was not about being choosy. It is about getting what you want and what you ask for! May be the difference isn’t perceivable in the non-disposable bottle version of these drinks we get in Pakistan commonly but Pepsi and Coke ARE poles apart and so are the other apparently similar drinks from these two companies such as Sprite and 7up.

Pakistan, is probably one of the very few places in the world where Pepsi rules in general. When people here want a ‘black’ drink they are very less likely to ask for Coke. And even they do, they are as unlikely to get it because of the push marketing/supply strategy that both Coke and Pepsi use today.

Ask a shopkeeper, a supermarket sales person or someone sitting across the counter in a renowned franchise such as KFC and he/she will tell you about how they can keep chillers of either Pepsi or Coke at a time and not both. And I think that is PLAIN dumbness. Well, I don’t mean that literally because of course I know these companies secure their sales by driving out their main competitor from the point of sale but does that lead to brand loyal customers in the end?

I think not.

It’s not true for me at least. I might be having Pepsi for about ten years now, not having a choice that is but that hasn’t really toned down my desire to have Coke each time I purchase a drink. And though I know the poor salesperson is not to be blamed but every time he gives me something other than what I had asked for, I feel like screaming in his ears, “Oh Please! Don’t Give Me Pepsi when I ask you for Coke!”

P.S. : I have enabled the option for commenting anonymously, so for those friends who go through a lot of trouble while posting a comment, you can use this :)

Hey! Who Put My Mineral Water in the Commode?

EACH and EVERY time I flush my commode and see gallons of fresh water mixing up with the dirt and draining down, my heart feels extremely sorry!!!

See this picture …

My friend, Tehmina, went to Kharo Chan, a small district in Sindh. It was a prosperous city in the 1950’s and is now in absolute ruins because of lack of water for survival of its inhabitants! Most of the population has migrated to urban areas, rather to the slums of urban areas which are no better than their old city. Why?

Water!

Contrary to what we are taught at school in social studies, development economics, etc, I believe that no matter how much population exists on the earth’s surface, there are enough resources for our survival both for the current inhabitants and the ones to come. However, today thousands and thousands of people die each year, not because there isn’t enough food or medicine in the world, No! it is because there is a flaw in the way we manage and consume resources!

Yes, taking fresh water for example. We all know of the water cycle on earth. The water in the rivers and streams are enough for us … But only if we use it well…

Now getting back to the subject of commodes… Here, in Pakistan, we are lucky enough to have natural water for consumption; water that has come down from the skies, trickled down the mountains and flowed in the streams. This kind of water has a natural combination of minerals which no human method of purification and mineralization can replicate. And I think it is simply FOLLY to use this precious gift of nature to wash your commodes!

So how do we do it then?

Well, this may sound far fetched but if I find a way of making this happen I shall do it at all costs.

This shank in my restroom (I opened to see how it contained water in itself), contains more than five litres of Fresh water! Just because this water is in here, it feels disgusting to some perhaps but people in many places of Pakistan yearn for even the kind of water shown in the first picture!

So here is my idea… we should use used up water to fill this shank up. When we wash our faces, the water that goes down the basin’s drain is clean enough for this. So, if I could I shall make a system through which my basin’s drain gets connected to this shank and directs water to it whenever I turn on the knob! :) Simple!

I just hope I engineer this kind of system soon because I really care for each and every drop of water that I have access too. The effort might just be a drop in the ocean, but sometimes, for some, even a drop is a life-saver.

PS : the water from our Wudhu too is pretty clear to serve the shank!