Saladin : The hero who became a legend

Well if you know me from the Ultimus days, and you hear “Saladin” from me, the first thing you gonna catch will probably be “Call of Duty” but naaa, this post isn’t about that. Its new & different.

This time its an animated series on Salah-ud-Din Ayubi. Its named Saladin : The Animated Series and is produced by Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) in Malaysia. I have seen only the first episode yet, and I found it quite amusing. I think its worth watching the whole series. And its a good initiative as well, remembering our heroes. We do need a lot of such works to get our heroes to our children’s minds.

 

Saladin: The hero who became legend

 

About Saladin: The Animated Series Wikipedia says:

“Saladin is be a 13-part animated TV series. Production started in May 2004 and a six-minute trailer was previewed during the Multimedia Super Corridor’s 10th Anniversary celebration in April 2005. The first (new) episode will air in late 2009.”

“SALADIN, The Animated Series has won the Best Technology category at the Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival (SICAF) Promotions Plan competition. It was short listed along with ten other finalists . In the competition, contestants have 10 minutes to pitch their proposed TV series to an international jury of broadcasting executives before a live audience of conference attendees.”

“The animation film Saladin by the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) has won the Tokyo Big Sight Award at last week’s Tokyo International Anime Fair 2007, the world’s largest anime exhibition.Saladin won the award for excellence in 3-dimensional computer-generated imagery (3D CGI), special visual effects and animation.”

[Thanks Sheikh sb for sharing this nice bit.]

The Footbal Fever

Today, I came back from Jumma prayer, only to find half of the office empty. I was a little amazed untill I recalled a lunchtime conversation about Football Worldcup. Today was the first match between South Africa & Mexico. And yes, you got it right, all of the missing people had gone home to watch football. It reminded me of deserted streets in Pakistan, whenever there was a Pakistan-India cricket match. But taking time off, from office, to watch football, was new for me.

From a Pakistani’s prospective, football is the cricket of England. Probably a little more than that. They are just crazy about it. Butt sb used to qoute a very interesting statement by Bill Shankly:

“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.”

Well, I can see that

In morning I received an email from HR requesting people not to stream the football matches, as it may choke the internet bandwidth. “We gonna connect a computer to the projector in one of the conference rooms, and you can go and watch there instead”, she said. Yes, that was official. I was not amazed to read this, as a couple of days back, I had read a complete article in Evening Standard, about how office networks are going to choke during Football Worldcup, as people watch the matches online during office hours.

It was the talk of the day, all over England, even at the swimming pool where I am taking my swimming sessions these days. There was a guy from Algeria, who was very supportive of his country, off course, and wanted me to support Algeria as well, myself being a Muslim, and Algeria being the only Muslim side playing in the tournament. And I agreed to him.

Ohh, and there was an English flag hung on the wall of the pool as well. Well you see English flag everywhere nowadays, doors, windows, cars, everywhere.

Tomorrow is a big game; first English match of the World Cup. Lets see how its start for England.

And yes, there still are a lot of people who are not that crazy about football, as half of the office was present anyway

PS: I was probably the only person in my office, who was happy that England has won the Twenty20 cup from Australia  Cricket: nobody cares.

“My Name is Khan” with Javed Chaudhary

Yesterday Alvi came over to London. He was going to see his cousin in a nearby town, and decided to stop by London to see me. He arrived around 5:30 in evening, and the first thing he said after salam-dua was “Yaar pehle chal ke khana khate hen” . So we headed towards Tayyab’s. Tayyab’s is a nice place to eat in London. Its owned by a Pakistani, and has been rated as one of London’s top restuarants for somtime now. Their food is always delicious, although Sheikh sb has some differences here

Khair, we ate, and ate a little more than we normally do. Adding to those were those big glasses, as you see in Punjab, of sweet Lassi. By the time we walked out, we were hardly walking. We had a little long walk to reach back to train-station, which was quite helping in getting us back to shape.

We still had a lot of time at our hands. One of the bad things about London is that everything closes at 6 PM, except bars and night clubs off-course. So there aren’t many places to go after dark. Having nothing else to do, we decided to watch a movie, only to find out that Avatar is fully booked at IMAX 3D cinema. We searched around, and found another cinema playing the same, which had some places available. So we headed towards the cinema, only to find out in the middle of the journey that the Tube-line going that way is suspended for the weekend, for maintenance. This is the second bad thing about London.

Now what? We searched again, and found My Name is Khan screening at the Cineworld near to my house. We both agreed to go for it, so we did.

As the intermission started, I saw a couple of guys going out, and looked at Alvi, who was already looking my way. Yaar ye Javed Chaudhary nahin he?  Lagta to wohi he. Chal ke dekhen? Chal aa jaa.

As we walked out, towards the corridor, those guys were standing there. It was Mr. Chaudhary. But still, to be on the safe side , we re-confirmed with him. He was here to attend some conference and was hanging out with friends. We introduced oursleves, and had a light chit-chat. Alvi was too eager to ask his opinion on Imran Khan , and I had to convince him, thats this is probably not the right time to ask this question. We invited him for dinner, and he politely refused.

We finished the remaining movie, along with our drinks, and headed straight home for cuppa tea.

ویلکم

You can read the subject of the post as Welcome, can’t you?

My Arabic teacher, ohh did I tell you I am taking Arabic classes, yes I am . So yes my Arabic teacher, who is from Morroco, and hold a degree in Shari’a from IIUI, couldnt, when he first landed in Islamabad.

As Urdu and Arabic share the script, infact Urdu is written in Arabic script sometimes, he could read it, but the problem was in understanding it. If you read the subject in Arabic, it reads Wa’elo-kum, which literally mean “You will see!!”, as in “You have eaten the donuts mom saved for dinner, now you will see what she does to you” I hope you got it.

As he, my teacher, narrated the incident in the class, he was like, “I was actually amazed to see the sign boards everywhere telling us, Arabs, that “You will see”. What wrong have we done to them? And I couldnt get hold of it for quite a good number of days, 1 month almost, till the time I was friends with a Pakistani classmate. So I talked to him about my confusion, to which he laughed quite generously and explained that its Urdu transliteration for Welcome. I was relieved to know this.”

Anyway … my Arabic course is coming to an end, and I am actually thinking about whether to continue for part-2 or not. Not decided yet.

And yes, I am back, and won’t go away again, for sometime at least (no promises though )

The stuffy wars

Somedays back, I was trying to figure out something, at my workplace, concentrating at my screen, when something just passed by my head. It just missed me.

When I looked in the direction of sound, it was a stuffed toy, that fell few feet away.

No, there wasn’t any fight going on, a war rather … As I was looking in that direction, another stuffy toy was thrown back, by another colleague, who was supposedly the target of previous strike.

And it was not just that day. There are almost a dozen of such toys, on the tables of 3-4 guys, and you never know when something just falls over you, and you see the guy passing by as if nothing happened. If you look at him, he would be like, whaat? Ohh, where did it come from? May be from the ceiling …?

I haven’t been a target as yet, as I am not into the circle as yet, but it just makes you feel light to see the stuff flying around in a professional environment It reminds me of Ult-A, when we would fly the paper-planes in office

Those were the days …

Lemonade .. really ??

Yesterday, we went to a pizza restuarant in city center for lunch. Yup, sometimes, you know dil pashori ke leye, we get into some pizza place and eat vegi pizza, yup vegi pizza And whats interesting to note is that they have a buffet for pizza, pizza + pasta + salad actually. So sort of “all you can eat”.

We were three, me MUF and his arab colleague, lets call him SD. In drinks, MUF asked for a 7up, we asked for 2 lemonades.

After placing the order we got to get the food. When we returned there were three glasses, big glasses actually like we have for lassi in Pakistan, on the table. The liquid in all the three was colourless, as you  normally expect from 7up. What confused us was, which of these are lemonades? They looked the same. I was like, lemonades should have a bit of colour, a bit of whiteish you know … SD agreed to me, but …

We even tried to identify the odd ones by observing the number of bubbles that go up from bottom to top, as MUF said 7up is supposed to be more carbonated as compared to lemonade,  but that was also same … :S In all this process, I was trying to get the waiteress’ attention, who was serving us, but she would never look our way.

Khair .. at last MUF picked one, and said this has to be 7up, took a sip, and confirmed. So, logically speaking remaining two were lemonades. We, me n SD, each took one glass, and tasted it; yeah it looks like lemonade, but … anyway …

We were still eating, when the bill was placed on the table. It stayed there for a while, as everybody was busy eating. When were done, we noted the amount. I normally read the bill before paying, so just out of habit, I took a look and it read:

Three 7UPs.

The shoes have been traced …

I received this today on my class’ mailing list, and couldn’t help posting it here

The pair of shoes which was thrown at Mr. Bush in Iraq has links to
Pakistan, said a statement from Pentagon. They have the following
proofs:

i) The journalist had visited Pakistan earlier this year. There he was
inspired by the shoe throwing at former CM Arbab Ghulam Rahim and Sher
Afghan Niazi.

ii) He received his training of throwing shoes by a Pakistan based
Jihadi organization.

iii) The DNA sample of leather has revealed that the animal whose skin
was used for manufacturing the shoe had traces of grass which is grown
in North of Pakistan and this skin was collected by a Jihadi
organization on Eid-ul-Adha this month.

Hearing this, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf
Raza Gilani have decided to ban the Jihadi organization and launched a
country wide crackdown against all the cobblers in Pakistan

Yeah, its funny, but contains some food for thought …

Magic Code

Magic.cpp

#include"Magic.h"

Dear Computer
Please print "Hello World!" string
Then wait until user pressed a key
Best Regards
Programmer

Well if you know C or C++, you gonna yell at me, what do you expect the compiler to do with this funny string? And to that my answer is: I expect the compiler to compile it perfectly fine, and upon running, it should display “Hello World!” as normal. After all that is what it has been told to do, and that too in a very decent manner.

Yes my friend, its all about Magic. Yeah rite, Magic.h to be precise.

Magic.h

#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
#define a )
#define Best ;
#define Computer (void){
#define Dear void main
#define key ;
#define pressed (
#define Please printf
#define Programmer
#define print (
#define Regards }
#define string );
#define Then int
#define until =
#define user getch
#define wait x

How was that

Islamic Cultural Fayre 2008

Yet another Mela

Date: Sunday , August 24, 2008

Timings: 12 PM to 6 PM

Venue: Eastville Park, Bristol.

Islamic Cultural Festival 2008

So if you are in Bristol, do come. As yet I dont know the stuff that would be there, as this would be my first time, but we should come to see at least. Organizers will feel good 

Harbourside Festival

Before coming to England, I was under the impression, like most of people who haven’t been here, that these gora log must be living a mechinical life, with no time for life itself. Working fulltime, and drinking for the rest of it .  I was wrong.

They do work, and drink, but then they get to spare a lot of time, may be more than us, for themselves, their lives, and their families. Throughout the week, they would work like anything, and throughout the weekend, they would enjoy like anything. They always have their weekends already planned. And you know what, every month or so, there gonna be some festival, or mela as we know it. Its hardly been a month I am here, and there has already been two in the city.

Over the last weekend, it was annual harbourside festival in Bristol. Entry was free, so quite a lot of people were there, so were we; me n MUF

Notables included an open air circus, BBC headroom; they were teaching Djembe Drum along with other things, and a couple of jigs going on. Luckily when we reached for the jig, a Sikh band was performing and the beat of dhol was so tempting that we cudn’t help actually moving our legs. And then, it was not just us, it was eveybody standing there. As we say, Gora qaum pagal hui wi thi. I have the video with me, will try to upload it but not sure if I will actually be able to as its around 40 mb.  But you have to accept, dhol rocks.

Circus was also fun. We witnessed some really amazing performances, particulary a guy doing rope dance (i dont know if its the exact term, but cudn’t think of anything more appropriate). It was a rope hung vertically, and the guy sort of danced on it, on the drum-beat. Ammmazing … I must say.

It was an experience of its own.

And just yesterday MUF told me about this. Its over this weekend. We may be going, but only to see the baloons flying around as I am a bit tight on money nowadays , praying for the salary day to come ASAP.

Khair …

Lets hope I could upload the stuff for harbourside festival. Meanwhile you can have a look at this, this, this and this.