The students of BCS arranged a Multimedia Video,Photography and Sketching competition in the campus yesterday, the event was very well organized and many students participated in it. Me and my friend Shoaib Anwer who is a very regular viewer and commenter in this blog participated in the Video competition category, we were asked to make a video of maximum 6 minutes duration that conveys a message. Hats off to Shoaib who made a video on the theme “Live to Love” , portraying different scenes shot in Peshawar out side the uni and in the bazaars, some drug related scenes and scenes from the 12th May incident, daily life, smoking, killing etc. In short the theme was to avoid killing and racial discrimination as life is too short , live it to love and not to hate others, the video was than smartly edited and made presentable by the use of softwares like Pinnacle, Ulead and Windows Movie Maker.

The Chief Guest for the competition was Zeeshan Perwez from Zeepar Studios , you all know him right?. We saw many great videos from the fellow university mates and personally thought some were far better than ours because of the advanced use of effects and animations, but the judge had something different in mind, he emphasized more on the concept and execution of the video rather than just the effects. We were glad that we got the first position overall, and yeah, all the credit goes to Shoaib who shot and edited the entire video, the concept also came from him. Thanks to all the classmates who help us shot the rebellious “Kill Rushdi” Scene full of violence.

After the results announcement we had a good discussion with the judge, who gave us some tips on how to make a video better and appealing, and he really appreciated our work.

Three Cheers for Shoaib (Show ON Production) Lolz!

Recently our university management finally gave us our basic need as a hostellite and that is a high-speed internet. Its amazing at the browsing and downloads as its the same internet that Higher Education Commission gave to our campus labs with speed at 2 Mbps, the speed though is amazing and downloads are as fast as one can imagine but at the same time it has several issues. My Blog website won’t open on this,including many other millions of websites are not accessible, not only this but it doesn’t even lets me connect to the FTP of my website causing a delay in my website development that i started a few weeks back prior when i was using the VPTCL. This is really getting annoying since i have to use a proxy website to access my site and am using the proxy at the moment to write this post as well, using a proxy makes it too difficult to post images and other stuff to the posts so its really weird for me.

I tried to ask the Network Admin in my lab to contact the ISP as to what might be the issue, but they are not even sure which isp is it, according to SpeedTest.net it says my ISP is Cyber House, while some of the guys in University say its PERN from HEC with Internet Services provided by PTCL, i called PTCL but they were of no help since they thought i am a PTCL Broadband user… Not sure where to go to and even tried calling the PERN Network Administrator on the phone which he never picked up. I am not sure what to do now but i guess I’ll have to stick to it till i come with an alternative.

Other than that, the overall surfing experience is awesome and downloading is ace… I just downloaded the Season 3 of Prison Break (5 Episodes) easily and really quickly *duh.. don’t think i am mis using it, we have tons of presentations and assignments to prepare since the end of semester is approaching*

Yes, its true~ I don’t understand the theory behind the attitude we get to develop once we move into hostel, you tend to miss your friends alot when you are home and miss home and family when you are in the hostel. Maybe its the same theory as of a Human being as its never happy with what it has and always missing or wanting what he doesn’t have. Anyways we have a full 9 off days for Eid Holidays and being in the Village where i don’t even have my own PC, i just have nothing else to do rather than watching Prison Break (TV Series) so far i’ve covered(watched) the 18 episodes of the first season to kill time and am loving it,also spending some time with my family and cousins and its makes me feel good.

But, the problem and what scares me the most is the amount of HOME WORK we’ve been assigned to do so, believe me i feel like being thrown into a primary school again with loads and bulks of home work to be done. I have to do a research kinda project for my Micro Economics, write a comprehensive 5 pages report on the Financial Managment adding annuity articles and interviewing an Islamic Banker asking related questions, now who in GOD’s name would tell the teachers about how can i do these assignments in a village which happens to be a remote area,not that backward infact but still it is a village. I can’t go back to the Hostel before Sunday cos the first dine in is on the Sunday at lunch when the mess and hostel re-opens. God help me~

Though we had our Eid Celebrated today but since the entire country and the Government is celebrating Eid tomorrow so wish you all a very Happy Eid-ul-Fitr. Hope this Eid brings alot of joys and peace for you and may your good wishes come true. May Allah (SWT) showers his blessings upon the entire Muslim Ummah. Ameen
Got this lovely card from Bilal bhai (made exclusively by him) and i really loved it so here it goes for free share;) (hope he won’t mind)

Thanks Kashif@Chowrangi for reminding it was Eid-ul-Fitr when i wrote Eid-ul-Azha:)

Ok, it was not so long since Indian Idol rocked the entire pakistani population by storm and became one of the most popular show on the TV that GEO Network finally decided the launch of Pakistani Idol. The news is confirmed and reliable since today a team of GEO network visited our university, with Faysal Shah (Blade and the Aadat guy) and are having auditions tomorrow in the campus to short list few candidates with talent for the Pakistani idol.

I was way the first one to register my name:P, seriously its going to be really fun at least tomorrow that we get some fun and chill environment in the campus after giving a boring and surely failed A-OOP Paper. The auditions are to be taken tomorrow at 10:30 AM in the campus and short listed candidates will than be taken to Islamabad where a panel of senior judges that include Hadiqa Kiyani and Sajjad Ali will pick the cream for the Pakistani Idol hunt.

I am kind of confused what to sing as i don’t have a good memory with lyrics though some of my mates think i have a good voice,So wish me best of luck, ah~

Update: I participated in the competition and did not get selected, Jokes apart but i really can’t blame anyone else here i was a bit confused but i tried my best singing “Bin Teray Kya Hay Jeena” by Jawad Ahmed which was not a good choice for a song in my opinion for such a competition. Hope to see the updates soon~!

Fasi Zaka came to our university on Friday to give an interactive presentation on the Marketing Strategies of the various Mobile Companies in Pakistan, Marketing freak as he is and lover as i am of the way marketing is done i thought i won’t miss this lecture by any chance but unfortunately attended only the last half-hour of the presentation as i was in the class while it started but anyways it was still loads of fun and learning even in the last half-hour.

Before i start, Fasi Zaka had been a Senior Faculty member in IM|Sciences Peshawar in the past teaching Strategic Management and similar subjects to the Masters students and left for Telenor a year ago, though a small chat in Gtalk with him he did tell me he has plans on coming back to IM|Sciences by the end of this year or next year, he has constantly been a man in media for a good time now having shows on Indus Music and AAJ TV (News,Views and Confused) and worked as a anchor host in various awards shows as well as a part of the production and cast in various commercials as well as music videos, in short a man with skills and great humor skills yet a Marketing Freak that many people infact most of the people in Pakistan know of.

When i joined he was talking about how Warid telecom is the most profit making company according to the number of market share that they have in the country and targeting only the important parts of the country and a particular segment of people in class term,Warid as he said has no plans to expand there network further since they are getting the maximum output from the minimum input they are feeding on the other hand Telenor he said was doing well in terms of the brand and products promotion, Ufone too in a similar situation but the worst situation he said is Mobilink in because it holds the maximum market share with over 50% subscribers in the country with there main strength being the coverage but the weakness they have is there high rates but than there was a reason behind why Mobilink won’t cut the rates less and that is because if Warid or other companies reduce there tariff rates they have a less market share in the country and that means a less loss (although the reduction increases business but…) but if similarly Mobilink reduces the tariff rates, with over 50% market share in the country there loss reaches over billions of rupees a month that are not so easily going to be covered up. Further i came to know about how much pain do these companies have to go through in there marketing, TV ads production with no good and cheap facilities and locations for shooting within the country for which they choose countries like Srilanka and Thailand, the future service quality in the mobile communication which he said is more likely to be bad as the companies expand there network more and more and in the end and the best of all that a stage will come when nearly all the companies will have equal rates for calls and other things just different packages.:) Oh~ i learned a lot, and more as well but just a few things i thought i’d share with all of you and yes people did asked questions mostly silly and some were good and i had no question at that time cos half hour was too less a time to get something~but here are a few queries i have now that i want all of you to answer as well as Fasi if he sees this post(i’ll ping him about it though).

Q#1:You said Ufone has website that has tons of stuff, if you think its something catchy(which am really sure is) why won’t Telenor apply it for its funky customers, maybe you can stick to Corporate Look on the homepage but how about a funky portal within the corporate website with downloads and apps for the (below ) who i think are your maximum market.
Q#2:You said the quality of service within the country is likely to get bad with other companies expanding there network, i.e. installing towers etc, if it really is going to effect the service, what do you think is the solution? Will PTA stop giving other companies licenses?What the …?:P
Q#3:Is it true that companies like Airtel, Vodafone and Hutch are coming to Pakistan?
Q#4:You work for Telenor, but do you really use it yourself ?What is the best mobile company in Pakistan in your opinion in terms of service and tariff? ;);)lolz~
Thanks, and answers expected from all the freaks~!