This weekend was awesome, we crossed borders on foot.. and we shifted our apartment !

Most of the Game Ventures team (except, Siddharth and Pete) went to Malaysia for Lunch. It was at Nandos, ok so why didn’t we have Nandos in Singapore..? Because we don’t freakin have Nandos here :S

So anyways, I had to stay up all Friday night, just so I can wake every other guy, to go to Malaysia, because we had to go at around 12pm, but obviously that didn’t happen, we left at around 1pm.

Since we went to Johor Bahru, which is the nearest to Singapore, it felt like I was in Dubai again. Thankfully it wasn’t Anyways we went to where Nandos is, just to discover it’s no more there. So we then called up Zaki’s friend who told us where the other Nando’s is..

Cutting the crap.. we had the best lunch since we had been to Singapore. Thanks to Ahmed on quite some note, because thats why we came here. Any how, we then left to roam around the city, we ended up to some mall and spent like a lot of time there, and I was like really effed up in the mind.. why because I hadn’t freakin slept

Then later that night, Weng had come, so me, Saad, Zaki, Zulfiqar and Weng went of for dinner while the rest of the guys headed off for Singapore, there we had some Shish, but obviously I didn’t and the light food was awesome which was Saate and some other malay/sing food.

Then Weng dropped up to the Customs at Malay, from there we walked, and walked long, really long, to Singapore, which is awesomeness !

Then we come to Sunday, we shopped kick ass today, lots of stuff since we had to move, and  we went to IKEA, Best Buy, Bess Point, and God know’s where else..

We had the last signing thing happen and then we cooked, or lets say, Fraz and Ali did, and the plan was to make Karahi Chicken, or Biryani, but due to the lack of Na’an, they ended up making Karahi Chawal but it tasted good.. like F**k freakin good !

And now we are sitting are a**es.. going to sleep after doing our accounts

Tags: apartment, food, frakin good, fun, malaysia, move, nandos, shift, singapore, team, travel, walk, week end, xuqa

This last week plus the week end has been the best since I came to Singapore, no kidding. Why you may ask..

The deviantArt Meet up

I attended the kick ass deviantart meet up organized by $spyed & $heidi from deviantart. These people are on a world tour, so they are going to be seen in a dozen of places. I met some awesome people there, some of whom have the best art skills I have ever seen, these people know what they are doing and are freakin good at it.

If you’d like to see the pictures, you’ll have to logon to facebook, here’s the link to the album.

The roaming around

Me and Saad had decided that we’ll go out and check out Singapore since we hadn’t really gone far from office that much and hadn’t really seen Singapore even though we have been here for quite a number of days, so this week end, the plan was in place, we left home on Saturday at around 3pm-ish and had the best time of our lives.. found some bachi’s who were super hot.. Man it was awesome I tell ya So yeah we took some time off and enjoyed the week end, we later went for pool table.. that was fun.

Picture, here ya go and here you got too.. Again these are on facebook.

Swatch

I got my hands on a swatch and a swatch on my hand. yo yo yo.. loving it ! I bought this.

Sentosa

Me, Pete, Saad and Balach went to Sentosa Island today, the experience wasn’t as we expected, why ? since we went freakin late, thanks to the f**ked up monopoly session last night.. I m not playing that game again, at least with the folks here.

But I think it was ok, at least compared to sitting at home, it was awesome !

Pictures, thought you’d never ask.. here.

Tags: balach, deviantart, fun, hotness, meet up, merlion park, peter, poland, polish, russia, russian, saad, sentosa, shahzad, swatch, watch, yaay

I m not going to write much on my life in this post, I m going to write about Tea Break here.

For me the project Tea Break started when Asim Imtiaz and me used to sit only rooms apart and me and Zair sat inches apart in Creative Chaos. Asim got me into this project since he had seen me working on freelance projects that had turned out beautiful. Anyways the moment Asim told me about the idea, I knew I was going to be a part of it, but I never got to make the design of the first version since I was busy with some stuff, and Zair managed to bring the first design online.

The second design we pushed online, which is still online as I write this post, was made by me, I did the design and most of the front end code, then Asim had all the development fronts covered, Zair helped me a tiny bit with the CSS, and Ammar was the mastermind when it came to market our little baby that was Teabreak.

There was a launch party held when we pushed this major update on the website, and I got to meet some really awesome people that includes Madam Jehan Ara, Ramla Akhter, Munir Usman, Imad Qamar and some I knew from before like Dr. Awab Alvi (who I believe is more blogger than a doc ).

We had many updates to follow after that and we covered many blogging events after that, and the response had mostly been awesome, except some tid bits. When ever I got to speak about Tea Break I did so and people got excited when I told them that I designed that website.

Later after quite some time had passed, we thought we needed to upgrade it a bit, and we starting taking feedback from users and also started building up a database of our ideas and new requirements. During this time, I flew to Dubai, where I had no access to a personal computer, only my office iMac, I obviously wasn’t allowed any work on that, so Tea Break suffered some development time on that, but it wasn’t long till I realised Dubai wasn’t the place for me, so I flew back when I had an offer from this another company ‘Xuqa‘, and the thought that it’s a game development company made it even better, so any how, I flew back to Pakistan, but even then due to my work hours I still wasn’t able to work on Tea Break, then the company decided that all it’s employees are going to be moved to Singapore, which is obviously super nice , so we moved here and again, lack of time followed me, but any how, I found a week end and finally did a design. It looks good to me, but sadly due to the amount of work I already have, I will not be working on Tea Break as of now.

Even though it’s been an awesome experience, I m going to go off the Tea Break experience, since I believe my work (both, paid and for Tea Break) was being effected, I could concentrate on only one thing at a time, and I chose money ( ) , no I m quitting Tea Break at least for a while due to the amount of work I have here at Xuqa (now Game Ventures), also since I couldn’t dedicate any time to Tea Break, I didn’t want it to suffer any more because of me. I m sure the rest of the Tea Break team will find an awesome designer to fit into place. I might join Tea Break at a later stage, but for now I m not working on it, I need to focus on my office work first.

It has been an awesome journey with you guys (Asim, Ammar, Asadullah, Zair), I wish you all the best for the future of Tea Break and it’s child projects.

Tea Break is and will always be in my heart and mind, it’s one of the best things I have done

Tags: ammar, asadullah, asim, awab, awesome, break, deisng, designer, development, game ventures, imad, jehan, loose, main, munir, quit, ramla, tea, team, win, work, xuqa, Zair

I m writing this post a few days after by birthday, which I had on the 22nd of April, and why was is this a late post, because I was occupied by by quite some stuff.

The 22nd of April, even though was my birthday, it isn’t that much of a special day, it’s like the norm. I mean I grew a year older, one more year for being alive. Thank you everyone who called, emailed, messaged me a birthday wish.

I’ve also been occupied by the cricket game we’re building, and I m pretty sure it’s going to knock your socks off. I just got started with the animations part, I m hoping it gets interesting for me to develop and for you to play..

Recently when Adobe Flash CS4 launched, they added up some really good features to it, one such tool they added is called ‘the bone tool’, what does it do ? see here.

Also I had a word with my family lately, and I got to know that my mom’s friend’s parents passed away, please pray for them, may their souls rest in peace. Ameen.

Anyways, I m gonna cut this post short, it’s freakin 5:11 am here, I need to sleep a bit. Ciao.

Tags: 22nd April, adobe, birthday, cs4, death, flash, friends, fun, Happening, life, miss, normal, random, work

Ever had the days when the week ends would be just awesome. Well this last week end they partly were. I had some really cool yet weird incidents happening.

First it was Ronnie, I met him at the Reception to the gym, and it was totally unexpected, I as heading for the gym, signing in, and comes this guy, appreciating my hair style, I thank him, while he suddenly asks me if I m a designer, obviously since ‘I am’ I say so.. The next thing I know is I m talking to him standing right there for the next 30 minutes. He’s even more surprized when he gets to know I m from Pakistan, and he’s not only surprized, he’s shocked. I would be too if I were him, Pakistan’s build up a pretty bad image recently. But any how, we parted exchanging numbers. And one thing’s for sure he’s a pretty big Obama Supporter. I was pretty exhausted that day since I hadn’t slept last night, so I went to bed early, and I had described the whole thing to my office mates..

Some time around 9pm these folks go out for dinner, and guess who they come across.. Ronnie. He’s having dinner some where near too, and he comes over to my office mates, and asks them if they’re Indian, to which the guys replied they’re from Pakistan, and he jumps up and says I met a Pakistani guy today and he had a mohawk.. and he tells my mates to ask me to call him. and I finally did yesterday, but his cellphone was turned off.

Any how, Saturday we were to get a Cat for the office, how cool is that, isn’t ? Well yeah it’s a kitten and it’s super nice. It’s nice to have a little thing popping around. It’s a little distraction, but a positive one I’d say. We even had some nice dinner at a desi place.

Sunday was mostly stay home kind of day, but I managed to finish off on Ahmed’s university project, which was partly on account of work. Anyhow I’d say this was a better weekend. And I like the new prata place that’s opened up near by.

I also did a Mohawk based desktop background recently, which can be downloaded from here.

Tags: cat, desi, dinner, fun, gym, mates, mohawk, office, Pakistan, pet, ronnie, stray

It’s been a long time since I wanted an Apple computer of my own, but since these are the expensive machines and not quite in everyone’s budget, I had to stick to the PC for as long as I know, except a few times at I used at my work place, and for quite some time when I was in Dubai.

I had demanded for a Mac when I joined Xuqa, and they finally got me one recently, as I mentioned in my earlier post, and not only did they get me a Mac, I bought one of my own too. Which is a nice deal to happen anyways, now that I’ve been using it like crazy, and loving the details, I m surprised how I have lived on PC and Windows for so long.

I m not really spending alot of money on the mac yet, but even the freeware softwares I have, which are mostly open source, the apps are beautiful, these are superb creatures on their own. They work effeciently and smoothly, and thanks to the Apple GUI guidelines, they look cooler every time I have to use them. But oh, one thing, I noticed that the brand new iMac that I use at work is a little slower than my macbook, which is more than a year old, and used obviously, this has come as a surprize also considering that the Macbook is a ‘Core Duo’ machine, while the iMac is a ‘Cure 2 Duo’ machine, and also the fact that my macbook is with a built in Graphics card and the iMac has a dedicated graphics card. Other than that these are pretty decent machines.

The best app for me has been Adium and Skype, along with my graphics toolkit, infact all my communication softwares have been the best, and yes the best thing is the application installation and uninstallation. Beautifully done Apple. Love you !

Tags: apple, first, GUI, imac, laptop, loving it, mac, macbook, my own

So I flew back to Singapore on Thursday, 2nd of April at night, and got here in the morning of the 3rd. I wouldn’t say it was the best flight I ever took, but I guess it did the job, I m not going to whine much, since I’ve gone through some really nice things lately.

When I flew back here, there was some work to be done from my side, which had taken me pretty long, and thats because I was on an artist’s block, yeah we artists go through one every now and then.. but as soon as I was here, some sort fo enery blew through me, mostly due to the chnage of environment, and voila I had the thing done and approved, a big smile on my CEO’s face mean’t some good things, and guess what, I got an iMac to work on.. I had been asking for a mac since Jan, so this, came out pretty good.

I was setting up the mac today (4th April) , I noticed there was an extra white (polycarbonate) mac also lying around, I little pooch paach I found out it was our Game designer’s extra mac that was lying at home, and since our Game Dev wanted to use it he had bought this baby to office.. I bet he’s feeling good he did too.. I asked him if he was interested in selling it, and hell yeah, there it was.. I got it off him.. This very post is being written on it The story does not end here mates (if there’s anyone reading that is ) by evening I knew I wanted to go out, but by going out or doing something doesn’t mean eating out, thats not going out and doing things, so our CTO and Game developer thought it’s best to hit the gym, and thats what we did. We stayed there for roughly 30 minutes, but I think thats good enough to get us started back on. I did the cycling for 10 minutes on about 90+ RPM and than Ran for about 5-7 minutes. It’s not that much I know, I just started back on.

Lets hope I can keep it going that way, and ladies and gentlemen, we’re still not done yet, I managed to set up the macs, yes both of them, and still manage to prepare a rough draft of another game we’re working on. Which I plan to be done with atleast the mock ups by Monday Inshallah.

Thats basically it for now. I m going to hit the bed or maybe watch a movie now. Ciao.

Tags: apple, applications, artists block, beautiful, CEO, CTO, cycling, flight, fun, good, graphics, GUI, gym, job, mac, nice, running, singapore, workout

It was around a few months ago when I had donated blood for the thalassemia patients, when I was employed at Creative Chaos, it’s been a long time.. and a very long time if I speak in internet time.

Any how, I was at the Blogap forum, when I read the post by Ayesha, that said that they are looking for blood donors. I was easily tempted at the idea of getting my blood into some one else’s veins, but anyway, help is good, so I decided I’ll do this.

Yesterdey after work, even though I was like super sleepy, I decided that I’ll go to Iqra University and meet Uzey and Abdullah. While I was there I got to catch up with Fahd and Iraj too, which turned out to be nice.

After that I hit Asim’s place, which is one of the best places I go, no kidding, where we called up Kamran and went to Aga Khan hospital, I got myself registered, and waited a few minutes before it was my time to give blood. I guess I was done in a few minutes.

Now I hope that blood does go to some one really in need. May God bless. Ameen.

Tags: abdullah, asim, blood, donate, fahd, help, iraj, kamran, thalassemia, uzey

With this post going up, I came to a realization that I’ve been putting up alot of energy in lots of things, keeping me fresh and popping with ideas, which obviously is a good thing, I always thought distration is a bad thing, but somehow I think it’s good to be distracted from time to time, to keep one self fresh.

Also aot has been happening lately, I put up the above image titled ‘Redbull – Energizing bloggers in Pakistan’, the reason I did that was because all the recent bloggers meet up have had free distribution of Redbull, thus keeping up active throughout the event, I thought we as bloggers should thank them some how, thus the image.

As that image was uploaded to deviantart and facebook, I thought would receive some comments on why bloggers are being associated with Redbull, turned out all the feedback I got was mostly positive, check out the facebook link and you’ll know.

Also since I m writing, I want to reach out to talented designers with knowledge and experience in XHTML, CSS, (PHP and Flash is a plus point).

Also I put up two new artworks, you might as well check those out.

Tags: awesome, bloggers, meet up, red bull, update, work

6th March 2009, the day active bloggers in Karachi met again to discuss various issues affecting our nation online and offline, organized by Google Pakistan, CIO Pakistan and Wateen Telecom, turned out to be quite some resolutions and suggestions, thoughts and valuable brainstorming.

I reached the venue a little late, since I was coming straight from work, and particularly because the taxi driver took the longer route for some reason. *Curses the evil taxi wala * Any how as I reached that place I discovered most of the people were already there, I recoginized some faces instantly (Ali K. Chisti, Awab Alvi, Batool, Jehan Ara, Rabia, Badar, Salaina). It was a little surprize that most people know me, I m not much of a proper blog, I mostly write crapy stuff, but anyways..

I was delighted at the fact that this meet up was to discus activism issues, my blog isn’t about activism but what I do like about the idea of activism is that it gives people what’s rightfully theirs and they get their voices heard.

After my arrival, soon Imran Hussain and Umair K. Jadoon were there too,  it was the first time I met them properly, the first time I met them was at the First bloggers meet up, but I didn’t get time to get to know them properly, until obviously we had a great online blogger meet up. Great ppl.

The topic that we discussed was about how to get a better image back to Pakistan, since we’re getting all the negative publicity recently, be it the government or the militants, it’s just not good, so we thoughts it’s time for all the nerds to take the situation into their hands (j/k)

We discussed matters of importance, being it sponsoring bloggers from the outside world or setting up proper resolutions and following them, the sponsoring bloggers idea was brought int light by Badar Khushnood, while Salaina suggested that she could draft a national PR policy. Farhan was of the opinion that we could all put up Pakistan’s flag on our blogs to reflect our love for the country (I came up with that graphic, that I allow anyone to freely use on their blog, but please host it on your own).  I suggested that bring out the positive image, snap along the way and upload the beauties of the country, be it people, places, events or anything on the positive side.

After our discussions and all, we moved to the Bowling area, where some awesome refreshments awaited us..it wa already time my tummy felt the need to get a top up

So we had out tiny snacks, some coffee and then.. yes right then we bowled our heads off.. didn’t make for some good score but had fun.. I had Awab Alvi, Badar and Rabia as my competetors.. It had to be nice and surely it was.

The picture right at the begining was a snap shot that was taken while lights went out for a bit. Thanks to Rabia for the picture.

Related:

Blogap – Bloggers Association of Pakistan

‘Karachi Blogger’s Meet up’ [Highlights]

Highly energized Bloggers meet in Karachi

Tags: 09, activism, ali, ammar, awab, Badar, bloggers meetup, blogs, discussion, fun, Imran, karachi, plans, Rabia, resolutios, thoughts, umair