Post Updated: March 23rd,2008:

The end as i am late clearly indicates was as bad as it could be but the amount of fun and the impression we left at LUMS Lahore was clearly worth an applause. Unfortunately this Olympiad had a few questions raising in the minds of many people since there were a few decisions that clearly indicated the show of favoritism, but any how the overall experience was great and we enjoyed alot and learned alot.

The remaining categories that i didn’t spoke of are:

Live Art: Our team made a great Live Art working on the theme of Half Devil and Half Angel, it was a great peace of art from the Team but the judges favored the best and yes the best one got the first place and the other got the runners-up.

Photo Essay: My close friend was the participant of this category and he made up a great photo essay on a great theme featuring the Current Situation in Pakistan, with some great pictures and tag lines but yet again the judges didn’t seemed to like his Photography skills much and he was left out.

Mind Quest: After making it through to the Final rounds of the Mind Quest, our team couldn’t resist the challenge against the Nerd Aitchisonians and lost out.

Console Gaming: This was probably a hard luck time for our team, there were 3 players in the team outta which two were expert gamers and the other one was not, our team in the semi finals against the Aitchisonians yet again had a great match, our first gamer literally raped the Best player of the tournament 3-0, followed by a loss of 5-3 by the second gamer and 2-0 again by the third gamer which knocked the team out of the tournament but well this category needs serious attention now. Best of Luck Majid,Qasim and Rehan~

Music Video: We had two teams for this category, and i guess both were chosen for the top-8 Videos but holy me, no one made it to the top-3 even though both were quite good.

Band Competition: Our Band finally performed in the final round due to a special request and stole the crowd, but still i would say we made it to the special mentions among the top notch bands from top notch schools and that too in such a short duration so it really matters alot.

The Final Round performance of band is up at youtube in small snippets you can see here:
Video 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHP1vl6hrik
Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sRrGYsY1yI

Singing Competition: Since i was in this category and no need to butter much but i was among the top 10 and special mentions(they even took mine and Farhan’s name in the Closing ceremony) so i think with such a little practice, baddest throat ever(it still is sour enough to talk) and less time making it to top 10 is worth an applause,Sorry forgot to mention last time but a talented junior and great of all a girl named Rayan also represented IMS in the singing competition, she was good with the vocals and all but it was a bad day that day so she couldn’t move onto the next round but did left an impression and the judges wished her best of luck~

Some videos of my 1st round performance on youtube are here:
English Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40GUkDRG34I
Pushto Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQJfVHgR0SI

Declamation Contest: I couldn’t attend the declamation contests but i guess we were not as paced up as the other debaters and a few little mistakes lead us to disasters, so we couldn’t move to the final round even.

Drama Competition: This was probably the best event, since we were the winners in this event Last time and we had to defend our title our team came up with a great drama, funny yet with a message but a certain minor mistake lead us to come Runners-up this time. Well done the Drama Guys~

In a Nut Shell i would like to talk about a few things,

Certain people were found moving here and there with the Judges all the time and it clearly showed the affect in the results, secondly, many people who were voted the highest by people never made it to the first place, i can’t mention much. There are still some myseries but well there were no very bad passiveness at our end but with other institutions.

Thanks to the LUMS Olympiad team for coming up with a great event and great fun for all~

We had a great time today as well but well hard luck in the Band Competition and Individual singing.

Band Competition: Our campus band that has more influx towards the Pashtoon Culture performed really well tonight, unfortunately they came up number 4th in the Second round, the top 3 bands will perform in the concert tomorrow and our campus band is invited to perform as a guest appearance due to the extraordinary performances.

Singing Competition: I also couldn’t make it to the Final round but was counted among the Special Mention, i tried alot to make an exception today but well am not a well practised singer, the best i could come up with landed me on top 8 Singers among the 18 Singers short listed for second round.

Drama Competition: Our campus drama team made an exception today and were straight away awarded a place in the Final round that takes place the day after tomorrow, there theme is “Amrao Jaan”. The drama today was quite a big hit with a great applause from the crowd. Best of luck to the drama team as well:)

So far this is what i have in the updates, we have a JAL concert to attend tomorrow,and probably many many things to do tomorrow so i’ll keep you posted. See ya for now~

Singing Competition:The great news is that out of 60+ Individual singers participating in the Singing Competition of Lums Olympiad 08′, i’ve made it to the top 18 for the second round. I sang the legendary “Wish you were here” by Pink Floyd(Semi-Acoustic) and the culturally rich “La mi chi zargee ta ra nizdi neh way” by Irfan Khan(Rubab touch) and thus made it to the second round whereby we are to sing 2 songs that are assigned by the Judges to us. The songs i have been assigned are “Pehlay tu Kabhi Kabhi Gham Thaa”  by Rahim Shah and “Coming back to Life” by Pink Floyd. I hope i am good enough tomorrow as well since i haven’t heard the later song and have to prepare it within like 18 hours in which i’ll sleep, drink, eat , take rest and prepare the song:P Hey’ no tension this condition is for all the participants~ wish me best of luck~

Musical Band Competition: After the breath taking performance by our Musical Band last night with there 2 songs , today’s results show they also made it to the second round and are assigned the Pushto song “Bibi Shireeni” by Zeek Afridi. Best of luck to the band members as well.

Console Gaming Competition:We also made it to the second round in the Console Gaming where the participants from IMSciences Peshawar knocked out the opponents and made it through to the second round. The game in the competition was PES6 (Pro Evolution Soccer 6). Best of luck Gamers~

The rest of the updates i’ll put up when the results come, i have 2 songs to prepare and the rest of the team mates are busy preparing Dramas, Debates,Quiz,etc

Not too much to say but we’re the representatives of IMSciences Peshawar, we’re participating in most of the categories in this Olympiad and probably rocking the Lahorii Nights.

Attached are a few pictures of IMSciences Band performance and the dancers from our place for there performance for the pre-qualification round, the crowd went so mad after the performance that it was a seen worth a watch, i had my performance today in the vocals category but the pictures are not uploaded so i’ll upload them when they are available.~

BTW we have qualified to the next round in the Console Gaming category, I am in the Individual Vocals and my results will be up soon so i’ll let you know, Wish me best of luck and IMSciences Peshawar Rocks~

UPDATE February 26, 5:19PM : I just checked it and Youtube seems to be working fine, seems like the Government Authorities have either lifted the ban or did it temporarily.

I am so pissed at the government authorities, i thought there was a possible glitch somewhere in our faulty internet connection that none of the Youtube page would open but when i came to the campus this morning i found out that Youtube has been banned or blocked just like the old Blogger domain was blocked. This is truly pathetic and i condemn this act of the authority, a few friends told me the reason behind the ban was cos it contained some videos of the “Elections 2008″ in which people were forced to vote on gun point, the ballot boxes were un-sealed and the bla bla bla… The PTA thought it would be a bad idea for us to upload such stuff so they banned the site, but what’s already hosted is hosted and is free to view for the people living abroad.

What’s next in the list of ban is probably going to be Hotmail because you know we get weird e-mails there, same goes for the Yahoo and Gmail… so what is PTA doing in that regard. You know i won’t be surprised if within a week or so i hear someone say the Internet is banned in Pakistan:)

This Lamborghini rests over china cups ( see the tires ) and is set on a display in Toronot,Canada. So would you like to dine with this hottie:P?

4 years back while I was living in Tarbela Dam, a friend of mine asked me to accompany him as he wanted to have a computer upgrade, geek that he thought I was, I couldn’t say No to a close friend and said “Fine, let’s hit the road to Peshawar tomorrow”. The more easily I replied positively the harder it was for me to digest the response he gave”Oh no, I am not allowed to go to Peshawar, between me and you even my dad is afraid to go there, you know the people there and the city itself….” (For those who don’t know Peshawar, it’s the city that gave shelter to nearly 3 million Afghan refugees after the Soviet war, lies in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and capital of the very province). Why my friend made that response is a different topic to debate on, but anyways let me tell you first I belong to a Pathan family from NWFP and my friend was from Okara, Punjab. Despite the cultural differences we have in NWFP and Punjab, there is a complete change in lifestyles as well, although we lived in the same colony that fall under my province but the place was quite a developed town with mostly educated people around so they were ok with that. Apart from that when it came to shopping around for stuff, Pathans would prefer Peshawar while the Punjabis preferred Rawalpindi although both cities were at equal distance from our town but that was just the priority and culture that mattered more to us since Rawalpindi was a modern city of Punjab and Peshawar being the capital city of my province who Punjabis think is very rural and backward. Anyway coming back to the start, he had his computer upgraded from some vendor in Rawalpindi rejecting my offer to go to Peshawar and later that year I shifted to Peshawar for educational purposes while my friend took admission in a renowned engineering institution of our country.

Australian Open Tennis hasn’t been good for Federrer, though he did qualify for the semi finals but the world champion had to face a straight sets loss against the Serbian Novak Djokovic, yesterday while i saw the match it was nothing but Federrer keeping on cursing himself for every shot that went from his racket, he was trying his level best to keep doing his dodge tricks but Djokovic was super freak this time in Federrer’s expertise, he dodged the hell outta him and well Federrer is out. Finals for Men’s singles are tomorrow between Novak Djokovic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France.

Coming to the Women’s singles Maria Sherapova continued in her style and won the trophy beating the yet another Serbian Anna Ivanovic which i thought was pretty impressive, she was playing well in the first set and i thought she might end up winning the first set but well Maria returned to her real gameplay, the rest of the match i didn’t saw since i had to sleep while it was only 8 am in the morning here.

Update: Djokovic has won the Final of Men’s Singles

In the past years the Pakistani blogosphere has seen a tremendous boom specially with the increase in the number of bloggers popping out, the initial start of bloggers comes mostly in the form of a quick set up of blog on sites like blogger,wordpress etc but with the passage of time the ones who take it seriously and love the passion of blogging just for the fun of it shift to there personal domain and hosted blogs that run mostly on platforms like movabletype and wordpress. Wordpress happens to be the most popularly used interface just because of its great features, enhancements and that it is open source. But you have to have a good catchy domain (doesn’t really matters IMO if its a personal blog) and off course a reliable webhosting solution.

I speak for reliable hosting since am personally hosted on a server based in Pakistan, but truly speaking am never satisfied with its performance, there have always been problems with it one way or the other, even currently i have to use a proxy to log on into my admin panel since the entire server and sites hosted with it won’t open on the ISP am using. Not only me but in the past many of my friends from other parts of the country would end up saying my blog won’t load, so if you want your blog to be accessible to all the readers make sure you make the right choice for a webhost, after which you can hire a blog designer for a unique blog design,necessary adjustments and than continue on adding plug-ins and tools to be updated, but the first priority in the start should always be a good webhost, quality content is than the other step.
I know its a heck of a job at choosing a good host but there are plenty of review sites on the web that’ll give you reviews from the users, other than that there are regional hosting directories with many links to hosting websites, i personally recommend web hosting choice ( a website that will help you find the correct if not the best host for your site based on your requirements such as setup fee, disk space, monthly cost and bandwidth etc ), using this you will have economical price to pay.

In,Pakistan due to the very rare number of credit card users and the less know how of getting domains and hosting many good bloggers remain stuck with free blog hosts like blogger, but than again when the political issues arise, specially the last year blockage of Blogger and its sub domains in Pakistan many bloggers faced problems, so its always good to have your own domain and a reliable hosting.

And yeah, don’t host your sites on the server my blog is on, am going to move it sooner to a new hosting;) *secret*.

I have a hell lot of tool bars and add-ons installed onto my web browser Firefox making it too complicated to look on the first impression but when i give it a detailed look it has all that i need. So we were talking about stumbling, how often do you stumble? or in short do use Stumbleupon?

First lets get to what stumbling is, in a normal definition we can say that just randomly visiting a website through some way, but in the context i am speaking stumbling is stumbling across a wordpress blog, youtube video, a flash website, an Onion news,a wiki article or a MySpace band’s page etc using Stumbleupon. If you are not aware of it try stumbleupon’s website and install the toolbar and put in the settings, i am sure that it is very helpful to kill time when you are up and there’s nothing to do over the internet.I have found thousands of good sites and resources using the stumble tool bar and it helps me alot.Just like for instance if i showed interest in electronics when filling out my profile at StumbleUpon and with the tool bar installed i press stumble a page, it brought me into a website say for instance Testfreaks.com a website that contains electronic gadgets from iPods,Phones,MP3 players to receivers, TVs and cameras nearly everything, so it means StumbleUpon was intelligent enough to bring me to a site with my interests. So will you stumble?:P

Oh and if you think i referred you to stumbling, please stumble this article to help your friend’s stumble too:)