Archive for the ‘Personal shit’ Category

Memories, Cookaracha Guides or Venture number two…

Much before Reboot and the Blue Screen of Death, before the Alchemy discussion on our family dinner table and the wild dreamy bet that turned out to be Avicena, before blogging and before DesiBackToDesh, in a land far far away (then marked as Geocities in Jedi lore) there was once a venture named Cookaracha [...]

February 5, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Personal shit, Writing, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  One Comment

Travel log

Travel long enough and you will someday hit an incredibly lucky day or an incredibly interesting one. And every now and then you will get one that is a bit of both.

So yesterday’s trip to Dubai started off interestingly enough! I reached the airport late and while I was fretting if Emirates would [...]

January 18, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Personal shit  No Comments

The Larry Ellison Fix in Karachi…

The first car that I ever wanted to drive was a Honda Accord. Don’t ask me why, there is a long convoluted tale behind that desire that goes all the way back to Abdullah Haroon Road, traffic duties as a prefect and my school days. Twelve years later the car I first learnt [...]

January 10, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Karachi, Pakistan, Personal shit, Taha  No Comments

C is for cookie and its good enough for me.

30th September 2009, today, marked Taha’s 8th week at CAS Kindergarten section.

Taha’s routine in the morning is a complete room by room tour of the school, including a handshake with the fire engine and Barney, and a landing at the Library before heading towards his class room where we hand him over to Noreen. [...]

September 30, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Personal shit, old songs to make you cry  One Comment

My new belly button

Somehow after talking about Pakistan Risk Review and new venture failure and Reboot for the last few months it seems quite odd to a do a post about my new belly button.

I mean what would the neighbors think?

Here is the scoop. Last Thursday after experimenting with three different families of antibiotics over three [...]

September 30, 2009   Posted in: Personal shit  No Comments

Chotay Nana.

There was nothing choti (small) about him.

Over 6 foot tall, with an equally impressive all white beard, a booming voice and a bogeyman repute, our mother and our khalas used to scare us with the Chotay Nana (the younger/smaller grandfather) threat. “You’d better behave yourself, otherwise I will call Chotay Nana”, followed by [...]

September 18, 2009   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Personal shit  No Comments

My crazy ride to see my word in print

For more than a decade of my life I was a professional student (which means that I worked, took exams on the side for a professional designation and waited for a very long time to add three letters against my name). A chapter that started in the monsoons of ‘89 in Bombay finally [...]

August 25, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Education, Failure, Personal shit, Pressing words, Startup, Startup Insiders, Writing, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  8 Comments

Happy Birth day to me.

Two years short of turning 40, it has been a very educational year. Where would I be today without my friends and family.
Age is definitely beginning to show its signs. Wild all nighters at work are now so much more difficult. I prefer my own bed/room/home over other exotic locations. Travelling [...]

August 16, 2009   Posted in: Personal shit  No Comments

High hopes…

What do Frank Sinatra, John F. Kennedy, Ants (the movie), Sesame Street, Taha, Jehan and the rest of us ordinary mortals have in common?

Next time your found, with your chin on the groundThere a lot to be learned, so look aroundJust what makes that little old antThink he’ll move that rubber tree plantAnyone knows [...]

May 1, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Personal shit  One Comment

I want to be a chapatti when I grow up, or, a middle class rejoinder, two

I really don’t know the deal with why Lahoris write so much better than us Karachiites. (No offense intended)

Witness Sepoy’s rant at Chapati Mystery on an NYT Oped by Patrick French on Pakistan.

I wish I can write like this when I grow up…

 
 

March 29, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, PASHA, Pakistan, Personal shit  No Comments

More soothing snapshots from the rain forest

Apparently everyone has been seeing red for the last few days and my green and environmentally friendly electronic blog post about my day trip to the rain forest in Singapore, turned out to be a major eco-friendly hit. Here are more pictures from the same trip and the same forest. They are much [...]

March 20, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Personal shit, Training  No Comments

Old friends…

Amir and I grew up together in Bombay. To be accurate the “togetherness” was the alternate summer we used to spend at our grandfather’s apartment on Club Road, right behind the YWCA, opposite Nair hospital. But the intensity of the experience was enough to make it last for the next two years.

The [...]

January 31, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Personal shit  3 Comments

Red light zones in Dubai…

Red lights at two am, late night, on Thursay (weekend night), in front of the convention center.

Red lights at eight am in the morning on Friday, on way to the airport on Shaikh Zayed road.

Things I have to do to get traffic on this page.

December 20, 2008  Tags: ,   Posted in: Personal shit  No Comments

Outliers…

Malcolm Gladwell is better known as the author of Tipping point. Outliers promises to be the book that would out shadow the success of his first best seller. Here is a quote from the last page

“It is impossible… for any other outlier for that matter, to look down from their lofty perch [...]

December 20, 2008  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Personal shit, Pressing words, Writing  No Comments

Morning walks…

Adding 50 pounds to your bulk and spraining your knee leaves you with one choice.
You stop running and start walking.
Since my first sprained knee, 7 years ago, I have learnt to love my early morning walks.
Add December and single digit tempratures and the walk becomes even more lovable.
Here is the one walk that I [...]

December 18, 2008  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Personal shit  One Comment