funny shit

Shooglenifty

Last Wednesday the World of Music and Dance (WOMAD), an ensemble of musicians from all over the world came to campus. I'll admit my main motivation for going was to see the British-Indian group Dhol Foundation, who were great by the way. However, it was another band that I liked so much that I am going to mention it here (and you can see by my posting frequency what things make it here). Shooglenifty is a band from the greatest city in the world, Edinburgh! Although they don't use bagpipes, their music is an excellent fusion of rock and folk with a distinct celtic sound. They were so good that they forced the NUS staff to burst into an impromptu ceilidh.
The band's website is http://www.myspace.com/shooglenifty where you can listen to some of their great works.
and here is a video of their performance at the Edinburgh Festival last year

Been in Singapore for more than a week now, and I seem to be looking at it through very different eyes.....damn, I miss Edinburgh. Honestly, Lahore and Singapore are not that different, but I feel a stark contrast between Singapore and Edinburgh...the people, the place, everything seems so different and strangely alien. I guess I'll have to get used to it again and try to get rid of my Edinburgh habits and expectations....

This is a conversation I had today with a rather nice elderly gentleman at PIA today:

"Singapore main kia kartay hain aap? parhtay hain?"
"haan jee"
"suna hai baree khoobsoorat jaga hai...zindagee main aik dafa singapore dekhna chahiyay"
"han jee kahtay hain log..."
"nahi kahtay to hain...gaana bhee to hai" (there's a song abt singapore? I didnt know that)
"Magar kahtay hain kay kafee mahnga hai"
"haan jee...Asia kay mukaabaly main to mahnga hee hai"
"Kitnay ka hai un ka ...kia hota hai? dollar hee na? (I nod)"
"40 rupay jee"
"yay to kaafee mahnga hai jee....to aik botal kitnay kee atee hai?"
"Jee?"
"Botal"
"Panee kee?"
"Nahi...yay...pepsi, seven up wagahira.....yay jo 'drinks' hotay hain"
"Pata nahi jee....2 dollar kee hotee ho gee pepsi kee botal"
"Acha! to aap ko nahi pata kitnay kee hai"
"Jee bas...."
"Aap nay kabhee piyay nahi 'drinks'?"
"erm......."

It's been more than a month since my last post, simply because I haven't been online much. I am finally home, though for the first time I wasn't looking forward to going back that much, such a good time I had had over the last six months. Anyway, London was good, Manchester was an eye-opener and wild (Madchester, as some people describe it, it quite apt). Home has been good so far, though the heat is unbearable. The day before I got home, the temperature was 52 degrees!! 52! in Lahore! Naturally it was the hottest day in years. Interestingly, a day before I left for Edinburgh, the temperature in Lahore was -2, the coldest day in years. So while I've been gone, the city has gone through 54 degrees....scheise!
I know this is long overdue but I must write something about the Edinburgh experience. Just thinking about it fills me with warmth, which is ironic considering how bloody cold it was. The cobble-stoned streets, the incredibly old buildings, and most of all the wonderful wonderful people, made my time in Edinburgh so great. To top that off, Edinburgh has an amazing pace of life, with every one of its inhabitants seemingly full of life and joy. I make it sound like a land out of fairytale, which it surely was not, but it was a great great place nonetheless.....nay, it IS a great place. On the flip side it was bloody expensive. I have been converting rupees to pounds since getting here. Needless to say, my wallet has taken a sever beating ( a rupee beating though, in pounds it still ain't much :P). One of my friends in Manchester asked me if I was looking forward to working in Singapore, or rather, am I willing to settle down in Singapore. Honestly, I do not. On the other hand, I'd choose to live in Edinburgh any day of my life, such is the great pace of life and the general ambience of the city. Excuse me for being over-dramatic here and jumping all respectable boundaries of cliche usage by summing up Edinburgh in one phrase : "Edinburgh, u bloody beauty" (wow, that is lame, more so than it sounded in my head)

Rammstein - Amerika

Sweet Escape

He sat by the edge of the cliff waiting for the sun to rise. A strong cold breeze hit him with mighty force and for a moment he thought it would toss him around like a child's plaything. “Never mind,” he thought, “just a few more hours of this.” Let the wind toss him around, in a matter of hours he would not be under the influence of such worldly things. The power was to come to him. The dream had told him to come at this place and wait for the sunrise. At sunrise he would fulfil his destiny. Fate was calling.

Like most people, he had a terrible childhood. Life in itself was a toil worthy of great effort that demanded the utmost of him. He was never the one “who drew pictures of mountain tops with him on top.” Yes, things were bad, but he realized that was how life was. Yet, the next day, when his friends and acquaintances were to find about his act, they would sit down in shock. None could be expected from such a charming fellow as he. However he put it, it was one disappointment after the other. He was one of the wise ones who had lost faith in humanity a long time ago.

He stood up and checked his watch. It was almost time. The wind had died down, almost as if the whole world was coming to a standstill to witness the momentous occasion. Every being, living or not, would stop in its path and admire the courage of he who took on the world. Slowly he reached into his bag and felt for his can of spray paint. This was not part of the dream, but the ever-ebullient aesthetic person that he was, he knew the value of presentation. He let a smile escape onto his face as he thought of what he was going to do, and what he was going to write. It was probably the first real smile he had experienced in years. With a spring he got to his feet and pulled open the lid of the can. With great care, like a master sculptor giving the final touches to an elegant marble statue, he went about spray painting the rocky surface. The smile was almost beginning to turn to a laugh now. He was expressing himself, his true feelings, he always felt happiest when he did that. Being the presence of humans however, he had to keep them to himself.

He had always found it hard to deal with the human race. They were a wondrous creation he thought, not stopping for a moment to think that he also was one of the species that he despised the most. Their betraying, hate-spreading ways had made him disillusioned of the world. After all, the humans were the kings of the world, however much he disliked it. Early on, he had made the great mistake of imagining that everyone inherently had a good nature, and they turn evil only under the most exceptional of circumstances. Thus, he was prone to forgive small deterrences from the expected behaviour, meanwhile building a great dislike for himself for not being able to live well with that race. He always tried to see others in a good light, while forgetting to see himself in one; he spent all his time cleaning the windows to look outside, while not stopping to clean the mirror. If one were to think that his fellow humans stayed away from him, then one would be severely mistaken. He had always been loved by all, though he did not believe in such an artifical emotion given the inherently evil nature of human beings. Everyone loved him for his sense of humour, his charm, his affable presence, he was the one to spend time with. Still he felt aloof of all this. It was as if he was in Venice, surrounded by everyone singing love songs and the dream gondolas rowing the most dreamy of places that Venice is. However, being in Venice, everyone wore the Venetian mask, beguiling their true nature under that most basic of disguises. He knew that what they were showing was not their true self. And it was not as he was wearing a mask too, he was the fool at the ball. Everyone danced in their elaborate dresses and their masks firmly placed against their faces, while he stood in the middle, the fool, trying to entertain the dancers.

It was time, the sun had risen. The message was on the rock. Freedom, Redemption, it was coming his way. Slowly he made his way to the edge of the cliff and stood to smell the blossoming flowers through his human nose for one last time. He imagined a thousand faces around him, everyone in their Venetian masks, everyone pointing at him, laughing. They were all trying hard to stop laughing, but they could not. It was the fool, they had to laugh! He shrugged their indifference; he had not been loved, no one came to him, no one listened to him, even the sandman refused to come to him. It was all in the past now. With one great breath, he imagined the wind suddenly picking up pace as anticipating his act, he jumped from the cliff.... A warmth went through his previously frigid body and he felt the orgasmic experience of falling down into the wind. He was flying, he would not be human anymore, he would fly. It was fucking brilliant. Fucking fucking fucking fucking brilliant, he smiled.

As the sun slowly made its way to the heaven, lumbering up into the sky, it shone with subdued brilliance on his last message to the world, the one that would make its way into a small picture in a small newspaper column in a lowly-circulated newspaper : “God is me”

So how?

As a foreigner in Singapore I have experienced a bewildering array of Singlish terms, but one of them stands out in its sheer brilliance and brevity. This phrase can be used to express an astonishing wide array of meanings, used at any appropriate time, and the gives the user complete semantic power to make several of inquisitions in the language obsolete. "So how?" is a brilliant attempt at getting rid of all other forms of inquiry in the English language. It could mean "What is up?", it could mean "what to do now?", heck, it could even mean "what bus do we take to go the place we were talking about?" Last summer, I was in the process of selling my phone, and a Singaporean friend wanted to ask me about my progress on the matter. He of course did not resort to a question as banal as "How's your phone selling coming along?" Instead, he uttered four words of such brilliance that I was taken aback by the magnificence of the structure. Four words, innocuous alone, the juxtaposition of which created a force so powerful that linguists all over the world would bow down in subservience. Those four words were of course : "So your phone how?"
Absolutely brilliant is all I can say, such a great charm the Singaporeans have for taking brevity of sentences to heights never imagined by others in many lifetimes. If I were to come up with a way to make my sentences shorter I would attempt in vain to abbreviate everything resulting in an incomprehensible concoction of letters that would take much more time in explaining to the audience than it would to say the appropriate sentence. My friend on the other hand exhibited a rare talent that is bar none, and for that, I salute him.

resonating with me for the past few days:

The funniest video on youtube!!

I sat down at one of those fancy cubicles at the library yesterday but couldn't help my mind drifting to the scribblings all over the table. It made me wonder though if I had seen anything like that in NUS, but it's really hard to imagine such scale in NUS.
The picture to the left is just an overview of that, though there was a lot of it, and I spent most of my time just reading that. Some really good jokes, though they can't be repeated on this blog since the blog is PG-13. Ask me in person and I'll tell you :P











Soon, it caught up to me and I ended up with my own contribution (and three of them for that matter). This is a picture of the most elegant of expressions : "scheisse"












There's something I never thought I would saw scribbled on a table in the uni. "Rock climbing is awesome"

"Anna-Lucia," she introduced herself.
"And I'm Claire, and that sleeping over there is Rachel," the other American girl chirped. "We are watching Ugly Betty in case you are interested. Do you watch?"
"Ha! I am afraid I am not aware of such nuances of your culture"

...After an hour, Rachel wakes up....

"Hi guys"
"Hi Rachel"
"Who is our friend over there?"
"He? He's..." she tries to search in vain for my name, and gives it her best shot, "...Alec."
"Hi Alec."
"Hi, and it's Ali."
"Where's he from?"
"Pakistan"
"What language does he speak?"
"English! and erm...Pakistani"
"You know I am sitting right over here! you can ask me"
"hmf...hi"

"Well, I'm gonna meet friends in Rome, but I study here, so you see..."
The rather pleasant conversation was rudely interrupted by the customary immigration officer. In international trains in Europe, rather than going through immigrations at the station, the officers board the train at the border.
"Can I see your passport?"
"Sure," Stacy said as she handed her passport to the officer.
"You are American," the officer said while at the same time smiling. This was followed by the look. The look is what would normally result in a pepper spray attack by the receiver of the look in most countries, or in Pakistan, a clubbing with hockey sticks by the receiver's brothers at night. In Italy however, the look is how the male members greet members of the opposite sex. Satisfied, the officer moved on to my passport which I duly handed over.
"Pakistano!" The customary exclamation that any Pakistani who travels abroad would be very used to had escaped his lips. Very carefully, he studied my passport. "I can not read this, do you have another card?"
"Another card?"
"I think he wants some other form of identification,"Stacy tried to help.
"I see, I have my student card if it helps." Meanwhile, another officer had joined the previous one thinking about how to deal with the calamitous occasion of a Pakistani crossing the border. They both studied my card and passport carefully for about ten minutes. I could heard the occasional "Edimburgo" in their conversation. After that they disappeared with my documents.

I was waken up again after an hour by a much more respectable immigrations officer, and by the looks of him, much more important one too. "You from Pakistan?" I could just nod. After studying it for another five minutes, he finally handed over the documents to me. The joys of being a Pakistani.

On the train from Berlin to Brussels, I met a German guy who had travelled alone in China for a year. Noticing my backpack, he inquired of me the same thing, that is, if I were travelling alone. A warm smile spread on his face on learning my answer. "It is fun," he said, "you find out who you are." After a month of seeing a whole new world and experiencing things that I never though I would experience, and doing things that I never thought I would, it is hard for me to just settle down finally. Even while writing this, I feel this unease and restlessness gripping me, this feeling increasing every moment I stay still. Doubtless this will go away, but I feel changed, I can tell that. More on that later. This sitting still is not making me happy. I gotta go walk around or something. I almost feel like a Bedouin now. I wonder how long it would be before I look at this part of my life through different eyes and turn the page to another chapter. I can only wait.

Random photoshopping

Contrary to what I had imagined, having my own camera did not send me on a photoshopping spree. I am rather limited by my knowledge and the wails and cries of Sir Dalton while running photohshop (Dalton is the name of my esteemed PC in case you didn't know, full name: Sir William Horace Dalton III). Nevertheless, below are some simple and random photoshopped shots.The view behind King's buildings

Skye

Loch Laggan

A loch in the Isle of Skye

*After publishing the post, the pictures don't seem
half as good as they do offline, but...meh

Dove Evolution

Thinking about people who are not gifted with divine hair reminded me of this video I stumbled upon sometime back.

Dreams

Last night I had a very vivid dream. I wouldn't like to go into too much details, but it involved a laptop with a dodgy disc, a form-changing security guard whose baton could penetrate through plastic, and a demon in the form of a human (whose teeth were glow-in-the-dark i might add). This however was not that unusual, considering it's only a dream, but something interesting happened when I woke up. For starters, I woke up in the middle of the night, without any reason to, and it wasn't that the morbidness of my dream woke me up. I couldn't figure out why I woke up. However, when I did wake up I found a phrase embedded in my conscience and I couldn't get it out of my head.......the figurative bobsleigh jumper. It had nothing to do with my dream, and it just popped into my mind out of nowhere, and I was left wondering what it could mean. It is a nonsensical phrase of course. Why would there be a bobsleigh jumper? Shouldn't it rather be a ski jumper, and even if by some fantastical flaw in nature, such an event did occur, why would it be figurative?
I have been fascinated by dreams and the subconscious ever since being introduced to glorious works of William Blake last year (and to some extent Dali). It is hard for me to understand the significance of the phrase. Though the more I think about it, the juxtaposition of three ordinary words has created a beautiful phrase...the figurative bobsleigh jumper, the beauty is hard not to appreciate. Like ''cellar door'' which fascinated Tolkein, the figurative bobsleigh jumper is pristine in its completeness and robustness.



Death on a Pale Horse by William Blake. The magnificence of the painting is hard to describe in words.

Today, probably for the first time since early January, I attended all the classes I had in the day (yes, all 3 of them!), and Alvin, I don't want you to tell me later that I missed an examples class or a tutorial; they do not exist to me! Let me bask in the glory of my own :D

Mac and Cheese

Tikka

Help

"What is the greatest paradox in life?"
"When you need help desperately, but no one can help you. You can not ask for help, but you are waiting for help, even the smallest of advices or such would make your day, but they are not to be. You are left in you own misery waiting for the darkness to subside while you know very well that it gets darker as each day passes, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Every you are pounded by the sheer helplessness of the situation as soon as you wake up, and you spend the rest of the day just trying to ease the pain, but no one or no thing for that matter, can ease your pain, and you are left to nurse your wounds by yourself and these wounds are invisible to all that see, seeing the happy, perfect you, unaware of how you are crumbling slowly, waiting for someone, something, to come along and give that ounce of hope, but nothing happens and you keep waiting seeing your wounds grow deeper as the days pass."

Nile

From Wikipedia:

The northern section of the river flows almost entirely through desert, from Sudan into Egypt, a country whose civilization has depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population of Egypt and all of its cities, with the exception of those near the coast, lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan; and nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt are found along the banks of the river.

Passion

"I feel like I am not getting anything from you. Tell me about yourself."
"Don't you think that is a rather broad question. What exactly do you want to know?"
"I want to know you....What are your passions?"
"Ah, Passions! I have never been a passionate person. Passion is alien to me"
"But surely there must be something. There must be something for which you care about more than anything else"
"As I said, passion is an alien concept."
"You are the first person to say that, I am intrigued. Tell me, how would you describe life in word?"
"Ethereal"
"Well put. but if you aren't passionate it must be because you don't show any passion. There must be passion inside you. Why do you think that is?"
"I shall keep playing the game as long as it lasts"
"I see, tell me, are you a virgin?"

Skye

Seven people, one convertible, and more than 400 miles...all combined together to deliver one of the best weekends. Skye was quite a divine experience (there, i said it)....it reminds me of how one Indian journalist described Lahore (my hometown) : It is a place "so sentimentalised that it sometimes seemed to curl up and rest in the air like an eternal sigh." There's just too much to write about in detail, so I'll let the photos do the taking (rest of which I will upload soon on my facebook account). I have to mention though the hospitality of a very charming old lady we met in a village in Skye. When we stopped in front of her house to use the toilet, she invited us to tea and entertained us with her great life experiences in the 2-3 hours that followed. Suffice to say, delightful experience in every sense of the word.

You can hardly see The Man, but a very nice shot nonetheless, considering especially the fact that I stay in the air for a few nanoseconds when I do jump one every leap year









It takes ages to upload photos, so these are all I'm uploading here.€

Monk

"Excuse me friend, how are you?"
"Fine"
"You are a nice guy are you not?"
"I would like to think so"
"Are you Italian?"
"No"
"Are you from Argentina then?"
"No"
"Venezuela?"
"No"
"Portuguese?"
"No"
"Spain?"
"No"
"Mexico?"
"No"
"Puerto Rico?"
"No...I am from Singapore"
"Oh, so you must be a nice guy then. You see, I am a monk."
"I can see that from your outlook"
"So would you like to help a monk? It would make people very happy"
"No thanks, I am from Pakistan"
"Oh! a small amount then?"
"No thanks"

The unexpressed

"Had a good night sir?"
"Aye lad, a night of excessive debauchery to ease the pain and please the soul."
"Debauchery sir? You heart must be full of joy!"
"It be true! It be as full as an Irish pub on Saint Paddy's day. One step hither, two steps thither, let you life take its course lad. Life my lad is like a raindrop, that is created in the skies in events of pristine purity, but after that it is just hurled down to the ground, it be lonely when it start, it sail through the dark, it fall through the cloud, but in the end, it reach the people, it appreciate the lights, the buildings, the people, it appreciate life...but alas, lad, by that time it be too late, it just fall to ground and the glory of life vanish unto the old earth."
"Such wise words this world hath not heard ere today o jolliest of all people. I thank ye with the bottom of my heart"
"Lad, I like thee, Do thou liketh me?"


*I'm getting so awful at writing these things,sigh*

Kiwi

In case there are still some people in the world who haven't seen this beautiful piece:

Free Hugs Singapore

The Free Hugs movement started out last year (i think) by a guy in Australia, and has now spread to all over the world, courtesy of youtube where he uploaded the video. The idea is exactly what it sounds like, the free-hugs people take a "free hugs" sign in a public place and wait for people to come and hug them. I saw one guy in PGP last semester, though I wasn't aware of this movement before and I was therefore very surprised to see such behavior because I thought anyone in their right minds in Singapore would not attempt to acquire Cannabis under any circumstances, but there was proof of that right in front of me. Anyway, some Singaporeans did it now and made a video for it. pretty nice:

Chronicles

This is what a daal(masoor) is supposed to look like:


This is what happened when I tried making it the first time:








....and the second time...



As you can see, I'm getting good at this \m/(O_O)\m/

Chocolate icecream and Onions

Yesterday, the Samba came to Scotland. Well actually, it was a Glasgow group doing the Samba (do you do the samba? or play the samba?), so it was pretty Scottish to begin with. However, for many like me this was the first time they had seen Samba, and it was pretty good! I tried editing the videos I took to make one video out of all, but the software I have seems to be as good and fast as doing it as I am at translating from Mandarin to Malay. So you'll have to bear with me. The videos are pretty long and the sound quality is not that good, but you do get a basic idea.

The Samba:


After that it was the turn of some weird Martial Arts groups to display their act. Their performance left many with open mouths, but that was because they couldn't figure what exactly they were trying to do.

The "Highest" form of Martial Arts:


Though thankfully, the weed wore off eventually and they ended up doing some pretty cool things.

After that it was the turn to put one of the burning questions of life at rest. What does rap done to Samba sound like? I'm not kidding. Though the audio is not too good, and the guy rapped in a Scottish accent(of course), you can still get a basic idea. Honestly, it was much better than I expected.

The Samba Rap:


Since this night was turning out to be such an insightful one, it was time to answer another one of life's burning questions: What does the castle look like at midnight? You see, SEP is a true learning experience:P. Why we went there I don't know, it just happened, but it looked quite nice, and after a few attempts at photography it was time to head back home.

50 things for college life

I came upon this post when a friend sent the link with the usual "MUST READ" descriptions attached. Well actually, for all the college students, i do think this is a must read. Though he talks about undergraduate life at MIT, this could equally apply to any university in the world, and it is SO true! Ok, less talking...the link
50 Things

Edinburgh Castle

Finally I have my own camera! So I can start blogging now...actually I could've started before but meh, I'm too lazy for that. (And you can see by the swiftness of my posting with the event how quickly I do things)
I came to Edinburgh late one night and the thing that immediately caught my eye was the castle. The sheer grandeur of the building illuminating so beautifully in the night was just stunning. It is after all supposedly the most visited place in Scotland. Though it does cost a lot to get inside, I can honestly say it's definitely worth it. The view from the castle itself of the city is quite breathtaking, though I wish I had gone on a day when the wind wasn't blowing so brutally into my face, but having spent almost two weeks here now, I know those days are just the stuff of legend.
The greatest thing about the castle is that there is tons of stuff to do inside. There are plenty of museums and each is quite fascinating, it takes you a good deal of time to see the entire castle. Oh and by the way, if anyone is going there anytime soon, they shoot the cannon at 1PM everyday, so you might wanna catch that.
One thing I have to talk about is the Scottish crown jewels. They're kept in quite an unassuming building, but the tour inside is quite breathtaking with meticulous recreations of the historical events. The Scottish kings and queens used to be take off from Holyrood Palace, ride down the royal mile and crowned at the castle...kinda intimidates you when you walk the royal mile after this.

After the evening, there was an excellent bagpipe player playing at the royal mile. The video:



I showed this to a friend, and although I can not reproduce his exact response, but he called it a cacophony, but then again he'd probably say the same about Nirvana, so I can't really trust his opinion. I loved it though, though I couldn't make a longer vid. because there was only so much time I could stand there without sparing some change.