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U2 Freak. Sports lover. Bookworm. Chocoholic. Biggest Foodie. Rest will come later.

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Life cant be any better !

Dinner last night at Sajjad @ Super Highway , Lunch today at Chaccha's. And since i am SUCH A BIG foodie who when treated to some meticulously done, superlative , mouth watering dishes - i am found in the most ecstatic of mood. But food isnt the only reason to make me this happy.

Quite contrarily to the last week when all my sporting ideals lost , Sunday turned out to be a Super Duper mega sunday ! Man United won, Safin won, but above all , PAKISTAN WON !!!!!!!

Okay. So last night was a pretty good one at Sajjad, one of my chaccha is here from America and we decided to treat him and some other relatives to Sajjad at Superhighway. It was mind numbing cold and all of us had to dress up as if going to murree ! Despite being frozen like an ice cube, food was marvellous and esp when one was as hungry as me, the joy was doubled. Came back home at around 1am.

Today we had a brunch at Chaccha's place where rather than concentrating much on food, i was more concerned with both Cricket and Tennis matches on air. Tennis, i had placed a bet with a most dear friend of mine yesterday over the winner of Men's title for Australian Open. I was obviously rooting for Safin. Stakes were high, they were of such proportion that my unending loyalty about someone was going to be questioned. It was a dare i took up after much thought, and it could well have cost me my reputation i ve built over years. But i had firm believe in Safin and he won it in the best possible manner, although gave me some heartaches in the first set. Safin won the aussie open finally, in this third final in 4 years. Final scoreline was 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. It was sheer ecstasy for the man who lost 3 years back to the unheralded Swede after being hot favourite and last year when he ran into King Federer. Today, there was no stopping and despite most partisan homecrowd to deal with, a most tenacious and determined opponent in Hewitt, and worse his own tempramental attitude, Safin overcame all the odds and after 2 hours and 45 minutes held aloft the trophy. Brilliant stuff.

This wasn't the end , best was to come with who else but our National Cricket team. This was a most amazing match and the way Afridi [ yes, him again ! ] clouted Symonds for those couple of sixes, i was absolutely sure we WILL make it somehow. Although, the pathan nut lost his pea-mind again and he couldnt finish the match [ which he never does btw ] Razzak the cool customer was there and boy it was some finish . That jackass named Rana FINALLY got himself an inch of a space in my good books after his much adequate showing with bat today, especially those couple of fours he struck to finish off the match, it was a dream come true to beat Aussies after 2 and a half years !

I am not sure what makes me more happy, winning the bet or Pakistan's victorious showing. But that still doesnt matter much, what is more important is the fact that I finally had something to cheer about as regards sports after the gloom of last 5-6 days .

But thats about it for the day, hope to come up with something OTHER than sports in the coming days [ which seems unlikely ]. Till then, Sing with me ... ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY !!!!

So, here is it my VERY late blog update. Almost a week late, but circumstances were stacking up against me hence i had no chance to make an entry. Some excellent weaher in karachi of late and it rained on monday and tuesday, bringing back the freezing, bone chilling winds back in town WHICH I LOVE !! Its strange in a way, because i am one who is very vulnerable to cold weather and normally, i feel much more cold than others do. But despite all of that, i still think that Winter is the best time of year. The feeling of wrapping yourself around in a blanket, wearing 4-5 jerseys/sweaters/jacket/hooded shirt/beanie cap/socks ... HEAVEN !! Nothing beats that.

But along with the rain, my cable guy had his service absolutely disrupted by the weather and i had no cable for a while and along with that, another pc problem. My Secondary HDD crashed with the most unusual and un-recoverable problem. Its media broke down. When i turne on my pc, while booing up it made some weird , scary screeching and knocking noise and bios failed to detect the primary slave. I tried some different combos and checked out with bios but all failed and right now i am in a fix what to do with it. The HDD was with me for 5 years and it had some important stuff, which , i can live without but prefer to have it. No clue nor any hopes if it can be recovered.

This wasnt the only tragedy of the week. All my favourites participating in various sports, lost.
Worse was Federer/Safin match where i had to sit the entire 4½ hours only to see him lose agains the 2nd MOST talented player in men's tour, Safin. It was most sublime tennis on display. Only another match which i can remember displayed this much quality was the Sampras/Agassi quarterfinal in US Open 2001. This match was phenomenal with both showing their gutsy, never say die attitude and coming up with some out of this world, miraculous shot making skills. Treat for all tennis aficinados. Final score line was 5-7, 6-4, 5-7, 7-6, 9-7 in Safin's favour. Bottom line is that i am just glad that it was Safin who beat him, not those morons named hewitt and roddick. Safin plays Hewitt on sunday and i am all for the russian.
Sharapova lost to serena in a magnificient match where serena had to come back from 3 match points to secure the victory and today, Serena lifted the Trophy by defeating Davenport.

Soccer wasnt any good, Man utd were beaten by chelsea in a pulsating encounter in League cup semi-finals and lastly, Cricket - Lara single-handedly blew us off the Gabba.


Other than this, University will resume on monday and this whole week i was occupied with numerous trips to bank and DC office. Applied for shares of Attock Petroleum Ltd. and it was quite a hectic thing. It was an absolute machli bazaar at all the banks. I had to go there on Friday and today as well, and both times i had to wait for over 2 hours to have my application accepted/verified/forwarded ! Total Khuwari .

In another episode of tragedy in my life , i went to this new driving liscence office which started working near my place, on thursday. I had my previopus learner's lisc. expire 2 years ago and i decided that now being 21 yrs old, i ought to get a Pakka lisc. When i reached the office, iwas told to get myself made another Learnes lisc will be valid for 10 days. I applied, had my application forwarded and medical checkup in no time. Then, this guy came up to me and told me to go this another building to have my TEST taken. Stumped at this new revelation since there is NO TEST TAKEN if you apply for learner's lisc. I went to the other buildin and there this traffic constable asked me to sit and answer atleast 4 out of 5 traffic signs. I was stunned !!
Eventual result , no prizes on guessing, i failed by answering 2 out of 5 correctly.

Next attempt will be made sometime in the coming week and at this i culminate my rather sorry week which hopefully will come to an end now !!


Till then, have fun all of you and have a grand weekend !

This is not normal. I am doing a DOUBLE blog in one day. But just cant help it. What happend earlier this morning compelled me to make this one .


Today, day started in the BEST possible manner. I woke up with bell ringing at gate , around 11am and i went down to check it, turns out theres a mailman delivering a package for ME, and on side of it was written AMAZON.COM
It Only meant ONE thing, one of my very close friend sent me my promised Birthday gift, which despite being late by a few months [ october ] it reached me finally and MAN ITS THE BEST gift !!! HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB [Deluxe CD/DVD] edition as well as the bible of U2 concerts : U2 LIVE - A Concert Documentary by Pimm Jal de la Parra.

I just cannot be grateful enough to her for being so kind to deliver me this shipment despite being busy with her university trips to macedonia and all other chores. Thanks babe. You ROCK. Thanks alot :)

By getting hold of this, my U2 collection is suddenly getting exclusive and bigger by the day.


1258 Mp3 Songs [Concerts/Albums/Rare/EPs/Covers/Best Of]
All Albums except War and Rattle & Hum
Popmart Mexico [VCD]
Elevation Tour - Boston [DVD]
Elevation Tour - Slane Castle [DVD]
Best of 1990-2000 [DVD]
U2 - Into the Heart : Stories of every U2 song by Niall Stokes
U2 Live - A Concert Documentary by Pimm Jal de la Parra.

Still missing from this is Sydney ZooTv VHS and few books which I plan to get somehow. Must say that i am grateful for having some of the most wonderful friends who went out of their way to send me goodies from all over the world and without their help, the above mentioned exclusives could not ever get to me. Hats off and a million salutes to all my amazing friends.


P.S: Cursed, if you are reading this blog at anytime - Yes, Sometimes is one hell of a song and i believe this song is an instant U2 Classic, in the category of With or without you, One, Bad and so on. Infact, i consider this song among my Top 10 U2 songs. Will list out my ranking sometime soon.

Being a mega sports lover i am and fond of playing/watching/disucssion multiple sports, this weekend was/is a boon for me because few of my favourite teams and players are involved in action and as i write this, most of them were victorious and that brings immense joy to me.

But above all of that, I myself went to play night match on saturday night with my cousins and man it rocked !! Love playing cricket [ like almost every youth in pakistan does ] and i am actually quite good at it. Lately, all of the playing has subsided due to our cousins being busy with work/studies and loads of other reason but whenver this particular favourite cousin of mine comes from England, our gang of 14-15 guys get together to blast the night away. Last weekend was amazing, because we played a test match and were given a target to chase 58 runs , which were accomplished with much thrill and i carried the team through from start.

Saturday night, same set of guys got together albeit with a couple missing for whatever reasons and I proudly announce my stellar performance of the night :

11 matches played
batted in 9 innings
Scored 18 runs [ out of which 14 were scored in ONE MATCH ]
Bowled 3 overs, costing me 38 runs for ONE wicket.
missed 4 boundries, missed 4 run outs, missed 1 stumping.

But guess what, we STILL won 8 out of those 11 matches !! Now whos to complain as long as we WIN :p Without an iota of doubt, one of the worse EVER days in my cricketing life but i had SO much fun. Sports really get me high and playing nightmatch with cousins is one thing i simply love.


That done, some other sports related update included both my preferred Soccer teams scored convincing victories, tragedy only being their rivals ALSO succeeded and thus maintaining the lead. Man Utd won 3-1 and Real Madrid were victorious too with same scoreline. Thankfully Ronaldo and Zidane are getting back some sort of form finally and beckham too is gaining confidence. Nistelrooy , how i wish that guy to be available for AC Milan matchup, my favourite striker and i believe he is THE most deadliest finisher in the game right now. People often blame him for being not an extra ordinary player. He is not. He cannot be termed in same class as Ronaldo / Henry / Schevenko / Nedved for their overall skills and technique, but the important thing is to score goals and finish the moves to have the ball in net, Nistelrooy is your man.

Moving away from soccer, on to my favourite sport after cricket, Tennis. Sampras was the greatest tennis player, EVER and if there is anyone close to him, its Federer !! That guy is an artist, a brilliant one at that. He can well be the greatest player and may even emulate Sampras in all the accolades which were showered on the american. One has to see Federer to believe what an out of this world shotmaker he is. Most creative, most fluid, and most entertaining player there can ever be, is HIM. Not the rough power basher or a hustler like roddick/hewitt, he makes tennis look SO easy and smooth. His performance in Aussie open is sublime and its going to be a mouth watering clash on tuesday with Agassi. VERY much looking forward to that.
On a side note, for eye candy i think women tennis players are the best thing ever, and Sharapova is my current darling. She too managed to get into quarters..

Now, finally VB series. I need not much to say about it, only that Afridi is my hero. Always was ever since he broke into team and despite his antics, despite having numerous, countless arguments with friends/cousins alike i just cannot hate him or ask to kick him out of team. That guy is superlative player and i totally believe he is MUCH more destructive than Gilchrist/Sehwag/Flintoff Combined. He only need to find a brain which works as well as last for a while, not expire after one match :p Thats about the VB series, will discuss that more as the tournament progresses.

Sunday i was supposed to go to a friend's sister's Dholki practice . Was good, was reluctant to go in first place since i was so terribly sleep but then just dragged myself out of it and went. Was fun. Will see if i can possibly upload the pictures or not.

After that, had a dinner at my sister's place and that was grand !! HobKnob's chocolate cake can so easily compete with Armeen's double choc fudge ! Heaven, absolute heaven i say.

Hah, i am sure this topic will make atleast TWO of my friends jump in glee, for they get rewarded after months of hardwork and convincing me - but lets not get drastic. Its just that i am curiousabout all of this business and i want to get the hang of it if anything else.Though, i repeat, I STILL HATE and those who are bored enough to hear the reasons, either contact misha or wait till i list them here - which will be most ironic.

I still havent been able to fix the time automatically and i think its very lame to manually change the time everytime i ll make a post. Mish, Sid, please i ll be needing some help in this regard. More so, few unknown but very kind souls who made an appearance on my blog - thank God there are still fellow U2 lovers around in this world. Sanity IS alive ! - YAY !! - I think i should get down to more U2 in here. Ms Haque, your help is also needed to guide me thru the process of changing my commenting system which you were complaining about.


Eid day went quite monotonous, atleast the same way it has been for last 5 years. Namaz,
breakfast , sacrifice , me helping around and in the process breaking my back [ someone doing 2
goats and a cow in one day and help with their chopping/cutting all day will know what i mean ]
and then meeting guests which can last for a long while. Boring. Besides, you dont get any eidee
this time round either, which again is quite sad.

All of it wasnt bad since i later at night got to go to my sister's place to spend some most
quality time with my bhanjas who i adore to death, esp the youngest one who share my passion for U2. Its SO engaging to see him do some matkas and jhatkas [ he is 2 ] on vertigo or on that
'batman wala gana ' [ hold me thrill me kiss me kill me ] ! Besides, i am his abeee mamoon and
formerly abayee :p

That reminds me, my current playlist consists of FOUR songs only which are [ in order ]

One
So CrueL
Sometimes You Cant Make it On Your Own
With or Without You


Anyone who would like to kill their time by doing an analysis what is my state of my mind if i am listening to these songs on a constant loop for past 8 days ? Couple of my friend believe that i am getting depressive whereas i vehemently deny that. I just Love U2 :D

Thats about it for the day i guess, besides i also have to vent out some of my fury on blogger.com fellows for what they did last night !! This post wa originally done by me at 1:05am last night, and as soon as i clicked published, it vanished, citing some damned problem with their apache servers. I know i know, my fault, i shud have saved it first before publishing, but then atleast they should learn to be slightly more reliable.

This time, writing the blog at 2:30pm and lazing at home. Somehow dodged and convinced that they should not take me to any relatives hence i saved myself from all the fake niceities and too much food [ which isnt bad ] but it will ruin my plans for tonight when i have to go for a night
match.

Thats about it ..... *i* sign off !


P.S: Just learnt another thing, its compulsory to PUBLISH your blog to actually have it visible :p *me* chuckles at my foolish self. This particular blog has been done THREE times and everytime i did not bother to re-publish it, which blogger sya is necessary. And i kept wondering where the hell did my blog vanish in this cyber land. Silly silly me !


Posting time - Saturday 22nd January, 15:41.