|
| Now Playing: Opposite of Adults - Chiddy Bang from The Preview
As usual, it's been a while and lot has happened.
First off, Happy Belated New Year. It's 2011, a decade's gone by and we're all a little wiser, somber, and learned.
Secondly, with regards to the previous blog post, I graduated from NUCES-FAST with a degree in Marketing. Thankfully, unlike many new graduates in the market, I had a job prior to graduating. It was working with a small startup that grew over the period of one year. I was one of the consultants for social media projects along with marketing and business development. Met some great people that resulted in some life-time relationships. Unfortunately, pay scale and management issues became a problem and ultimately led to my departure.
While still at the start-up, I was recruited by Pakistan's leading software house to help with the business development in the United States. This was a bittersweet experience for me. It was nice working for a big organization, but it was horrendous to see how they conducted business. There was no vision or long-term strategy. It just seemed like firing shots into the dark, and if you got lucky, you won. Rarely have I ever seen such a haphazard approach to business. The irony being that this organization had the capacity to capitalize with an on-shore US office but was squandered by no vision and constant cutbacks. Again, I met some great people here, and I'm always happy with that. Ironically enough, my departure seemed to start the exodus of a number of long-term employees.
While at the software house, I got into UTS and the visa just came through. It was a bit of a shock at how fast things happened. Normally my experience with getting visas on time, etc is fuzzy - to put it politely. Otherwise, it really hit home what I'd be missing. Every weekend was always a BBQ or gaming with friends. Food and random all nighters. It was good. Leaving family behind is never easy as it is. Plus creature comforts, like car, personal bathrooms, bed, clean clothes - all this stuff you miss. But again, it's not been a big culture shock as I thought it would be due to 2 reasons. Reason numero uno - Suhaib, the ever prepared brother and reason number two - America experience. Having Suhaib here means that I had a place to live (for free :D) and a ready set of friends to at least walk into. The entire America experience taught me how most campuses work, so it's not the slightest bit unusual. So, good things come.
Hopefully, I'll be posting more humorous anecdotes about how I keep getting lost (not that many times surprisingly enough) or food experiences (THAI, SUSHI - so many good things here) or pictures (will start to upload them slowly but surely they'll be up on Facebook).
For now toodles. :D | | |
| Now Playing: Activity by Way Out West I'm done. 5 years of school (1 in the US and 4 in Pakistan). I've finally graduated, the degree is over, I have no more school to look at again for another 2 to 4 years until grad school. It's a wonderful feeling. Moving away from the daily grind of quizzes, projects, midterms, finals, and useless gossip, it's over. I can breathe easy and enjoy the one week I have off till work starts. I'll be working at TkXel most likely as a social media/business development areas. So still connected to technology for the meantime. Moving on, yes, there has been no update. It's been a very very long time. The final semester meant total focus on school, gritting my teeth and waiting for it to end. As much as I've had this love/hate relationship with NUCES-FAST, I'm happy that I had it. I've learned quite a few things. The bad and good experiences have changed me in ways that make me smarter, stronger and evolved. I've made some good friends, learned how two-faced people can be as well, but it's all worked for the better in the end. Switching tracks, Sana Syed gets a massive gift from me when she comes to Pakistan. She's interning at Grooveshark. It's a great free online streaming service that lets you upload your music and listen to what's been uploaded by everyone. The great thing is that it's free and you can find the most obscure, random tracks ever. Since it's accessible anywhere thanks to being streamed over the Internet, so I'm technically never without my collection anywhere. If you upload enough songs you have access to the VIP features which includes Last.fm support and Scrobbling. As much is it a blatant pitch, I love the service. Add me if you do sign up (hsyed26). It's a great thing and the more users means that the service continues to grow and the collection grows. I've been hooked quite badly with it playing the background on all my browsers. Unfortunately, it does eat some bandwidth on your connections, so if you're sitting on something above 1Mbps you should be fine. That's all for now, if anyone of you is hiring. HIRE ME, here's my LinkedIn profile. Drop me a line, I'm pretty much a business major with a real die-hard competency in technology. Toodles for now, hopefully this might mean more frequent updates. | | |
| Now Playing: United States of Pop (2009) by DJ EarwormValentine's day - not exactly what I planned it on being. But as usual, it's been a relatively quiet day. Spent the day catching up on sleep from awesome time spent with Hassan and Rizwan. Those two keep me sane at the times when things seem to be headin' downhill at the perfect time. The aimless conversation, random jokes and discussions are what I needed after the breakup. It's going to be a hectic few weeks. Work is really picking up, hopefully things will continue to remain stable on that front. I'm jealous of Hera, she gets to fly out to Europe to attend the MWC 2010 event. It seems like a pretty awesome event considering that MS is going to be rolling out the new Windows Mobile. See that there is my problem, rather than connecting emotionally with anyone, I just continue to bury myself in work. It's pathetic. I need to remember that I should be angry, or at least - sad. Nothing, not a single effin' thing. How can you turn out to be like that, either I'm absolutely ticked or just completely indifferent. I think I'm a robot. *beep* | | |
| It's over.
Those that know will know, otherwise, you'll find out soon enough.
It hurts, but we're still friends somehow.
How does that work?
Help. Please, help.
PS. I really should get to work on that P&G Competition thing. We've done NOTHING.
| | |
| Now Playing: Bad Boy for Life by P. Diddy I'm going through a revival of old-school hip-hop. The cheesy bass thumps with ridiculously pimped out cars with lots of random money flashing, etc brings back fond memories of some interesting music tastes. I start with music because of this video by the New York Times: http://bit.ly/3O4vk3Basically as an overview, the reporter raises a very valid point. Almost everyone in Pakistan realizes that we're at war. A civil war of sorts since we are targeting our own civilians in an effort to remove elements that are locally and foreign based. The media is actively supporting military action in the affected areas, the government has acknowledged that we are indeed at war, yet socially we continue to ignore the war aspect of this conflict. The reporter brings the point home by saying that our own musicians, people that the youth often look upto and mirror aren't singing about the sacrifice that families and soldiers are going through. They're not singing about the families that have been displaced, they're not singing about the dead soldiers, they're not singing about the people who die everyday in the cities of Pakistan; they keep talking about "foreign" elements. I'm not necessarily a pro-America or pro-Pakistani element, but the point struck a chord with me. We let this people exist in Pakistan, we let them integrate into our society, we let them take the poor and turn them into monsters. We've let them hijack religion and justify killing; something that Islam abhors with untold clarity. There are rules of conflict that are to be respected regardless of the situation, yet these criminals flout them everytime a bomber walks into a crowded market. Shezad Roy's song "Laga Raay" was brilliant when it came out. I loved it because it took shots at EVERYONE. The religious, the lawyers, the politicians, the general public, the West; no one was left untouched. It was basically a very accurate representation of what has been happening in Pakistan. It's not just a "foreign element" that's hurting us, it's our lack of action. We know who these people are, we know where they're coming from, but we can't seem to condemn them. The few innocent people that do end up becoming targets and ultimately killed. I find this situation similar to sticking your head in the sand and hoping that the problem will go away. Right now, we need the educated masses to help build a proper system to support these actions. When we, the youth, decide to stay in Pakistan and work towards bringing a change in good governance and cultural values can we change Pakistan. If we all continue to escape abroad, it's pointless complaining about a system that doesn't work. That's all for now. Plan to write more about Pakistan in the near future. kbai. | | |
|
