whistler’s blog

I haven’t blogged in months, I felt like paying more attention to more useful things. I have been working on a car for the FSAE competition. Now I am programming the ground station for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. After a lot of confusion of where I’m heading, I have no regrets that I decided to do mechanical engineering. And looking back at it, it has been a fun year at AUS, regardless of my constant complaints about how hot it is in Sharjah and how hard it is to get a driving license over here. Maybe I’ll blog a little bit more often, or maybe I wont.

Today was my last IB exam, and finally after months of hardship, its over. I must say although IB may have given me a little different experience, I am an A Level kind of person. My grades have been very low, reason for getting rejected at universities where I would really like going to. I am pretty sure my grades would have been superb if I were doing A Levels.

Well, I should also blame TIS for the bad grades and frustration. At my new school, EIS, it was fun and exciting, while very tough at the same time. I would really miss this place.

I have never waited for any other day as I have waited for today. I had put a counter on iGoogle and google desktop(when I used it) for this day. Finally it counts 0 days.

Now I am planning to focus on my health. Have hardly had any exercise since I moved to UAE. I’ll take up some open source project. Redesign this website. Finalize where I am heading for uni, as everyone but me knows by now.

I am very happy with my computer, running feisty makes it ultra productive and it looks amazingly cool too, with all my customizations of course.

159 days till i get out of the cage of IB, i.e. my last IB exam. I am already beginning to plan what I want to do. Firstly I want to go trekking, there are so many wonderful places out there like Nanga Parbat, Deosai, Rakaposhi and Siri paye. Trekking previous June was one of the best experiences of my life. This time I also want to do something more thrilling as well like rock climbing, repelling or rafting.

Then I am thinking of doing an internship somewhere as I have never had any sort of real work experience. I might take up some open source coding project, some entrepreneurial idea or both. And of course I want to meet everyone I know in Pakistan before I go on to university.

But before that there is the Winter break in a week, I wont be going to Pakistan. Instead I’ll have to work on my extended essay, write a world lit essay, do all the economics portfolios, get physics lab reports, do my other math coursework, not to forget the business project, get in position to be able to speak enough French to get a decent grade in the oral, send all my documents to unis, I must be missing something on the list.

The next five months dont look very good!

No post for a long time, I have been quite busy and am trying to reduce the amount of time I waste using my computer, i.e. being carried away browsing sites which are irrevelevant to any of my IB assignments.

A little update on my life, I have started taking guitar lessons, and have to buy a guitar, just that I cant find any time to go to some place to shop for it. Finally my extended essay is beginning to take some shape but still far from complete, instead of doing lab experiments I want to create a computer simulation for the essay. I am making some progress catching up with the french class, but really need to work on my vocabulary.

I am still quite screwed with work, have to cover another 45 CAS hours, do courseworks, revise previous things, get done with university applications, so I dont think I will increase the frequency of blogging, particularly when I dont get much comments or hits.

Over the course of Ramadan I have mastered the art of sleeping in the bus, now I am aware of several postures that are suitable for sleeping. I had got a backache from the way I used to sleep before. One Thursday my phone and watch slipped out of my pocket while sleeping and I had to wait till Sunday to get them back.

Some interesting things from class. Economics period. We are missing a teacher, so there is a substitute but he stays outside the class and we are engaged in various activities. Suddenly he comes in and asks why are some of us listening to music. Somebody says: “Im not listening to music, im learning spanish!” *pause* “Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa “. Really good excuse!

Math class. We are finding determinant of a 3×3 matrix on the board with teacher. Somebody says the wrong answer for the step, teacher (writing the right answer) says: “Who’s your teacher?”, next step the teacher calculates wrong, Lina to teacher: “Who’s your teacher?”.

When I agreed to set up the new shelf of my sister from IKEA we were bringing in all the stuff to her room, Mariam: “Where is the recipe for the shelf?”

Well yeah everything was pretty abrupt and random but dont have much time, I’ll post about our Group 4 project sometime.

After spending a few days working in an accellerated pace including sometimes keeping awake overnight, I am now in a somewhat better situation. I have finally finalized my extended essay idea and am going to start working on the experimental part of it during breaks. I need to get in to some sort of activity, probably music classes to cover some CAS hours. I have to do my world lit essay before the end of ramadan, so i can prepare for my english oral presentation and TOK presentation in the eid holidays and also complete a math coursework. I badly need extra french tuition, I seem to know nothing compared to others in the ab initio class. Have to work during breaks on french sometimes but that is not sufficient. I lost my TI 83 on wednesday so doing math work has become painful. Almost forgot I had to buy lemons for group 4 project tomorrow.

Regular visitors would notice this blog gone back to a previous date. Well the server got hacked and I had no recent backup. I had just done a lot of updating recently because I know I will not find much time for this in my final year of IB diploma.

Life is tough, have to wake up early in the morning for school, school is a long distance away and traffic in Dubai is a big headache, There are all kinds of deadlines to be met for IB. At TIS we wasted a lot of our time, over here at EIS it is acadamically tougher but people, both teachers and students have been very friendly and helpful so far. Have to catch up on all the work and get where the rest of the students are.

Well some people told me that people in UAE dont really study, but here at EIS i think they are very good at that. Its the first weekend after the start of school, spent my day after school at mall of emirates and had fun with my new friends but the next two days are going to be serious work.

My interest in photography is nothing new, but my gallery at flickr is! I wanted to put a gallery on this site but was facing problems with drupal. So i decided to use flickr to host my photos instead, which is much better than running your own script to manage photo’s.

I’ve put many old and new snaps that I have taken, even got some positive response, I never checked before that someone had commented on my snaps. I’m even thinking of upgrading my flickr account but its useless until I get a better internet connection and better photography skills.

I do have a new 6 Mega pixels camera but I’m not happy with its zoom. Apart from that my K750 is useful when I get something worthy of capturing unexpectedly. Picasa is really good for editing the photo’s i guess I wouldn’t need anything else, just some camera accessories.

Few days back I went to trip to northern areas with school through Adventure Foundation Pakistan. It was fun and a really nice experience, specially the first three trekking days were really cool. We trekked from Thandiani to Biran Gali on day one, from there to Dagri on day two, next day we trekked to Natia Gali via Miran Jani.

We then had to part with the very nice new friends we had made over the three days. We then camped at Ayubia and rested there most of the time. There we had 16 annoying sixth-graders camping with us. On the second day at Ayubia we went for a trek to Shekapura, if I got the name correctly.

The most thrilling part of the trip was on day two when we got stuck in a hailstorm, we had to wait under a tree for an hour for raincoats to arrive, after which we started moving towards camp again, it seemed like the longest walk in life.

It was truly wonderful and I would love to go on such a trek next year as well. I have uploaded the pictures taken with the new Sony Cybershot DSC-W30 here.

6th was my visa interview date so I had to go to Islamabad. Woke up at 2:30 at night, I had 5 O clock PIA flight and that reached there at 7:00. I did not have any luggage, just a hand bag, so I was the first one to get out of the airport. Reached the convention center a little later. It was quite unexpected, bags and mobile phones were entrusted to some people before getting in to the shuttle. The shuttle took us in the enclosure towards the embassy. Then there was a really long wait after i got interviewed. They said I’ll hopefully get a visa before the GYLC starts.

When returning to the convention center, the shuttles tire’s went flat, so we had to wait for another shuttle to come. After collecting my belongings I called Shehryar Ali, a good friend of mine and he came to pick me up. He and his mom gave me a tour of Islamabad. I went to KFC and to his house. It was nice meeting him after such a long time. Then they dropped me at the airport. Islamabad airport happens to be a really tiny one with only one gate, this was the first time i noticed that. I slept most of the time on the aircraft. The plane got a little delayed, but was back in Karachi before 5:30.