This blog comes in a bit late though, but it includes one of those things that I always wanted to do and now finally did it. I have a couple of things that I intend to do whenever I get the chance. There is Bungee jumping, sky diving and ice skating, but now since I have done skiing, we can take that out of the picture.

There is a small hill close to the place where I live which is great for downhill skiing. I went with Jon to that place (He does snow boarding btw) and rented skis and a helmet for 12 + 5 euros respectively.

If you see there on the background (left picture), there are ropes that you can hang on to while they take you up. This takes care of the effort required in climbing the hill. Trust me, I tried it and its really hard with the skis. I ended up skiing backwards a couple of times in my attempt to reach the top. The skiing shoes are so rigid that you cannot even move your feet and you walk like a robot. Also, once you fall, its really hard to get up as you cannot bend your feet and have to keep your feet to the sides and push yourself up with your hands. Anyway, after a few trials and errors, which included falling and getting up, I finally got the hang of it.

We stayed there for 3 hours and I was really tired when we decided to go back (we did jog in the night anyway though :) ). It was a great fun experience which I think that everyone should have. Its always fun to try new things as you never know when you might get the need for it or when you might get the chance for it ever again. So grab any chance that comes your way and enjoy it to the fullest.

Wednesday, 7th February 2007, 3:10 am

if you all were wondering, there was a pic here that said -30 C. Now I am getting annoyed with MSN Spaces

I moved to my new Apartment on 3rd of February. Here are a few pics in which you might be interested. Bed to the left, computer in the center and PS2 down to the right :). How? Just say that I got an extra monitor and a guy has a spare PS2 :D.

Since the start of this semester, I had been applying to places for a job. After sending application to about a dozen companies (both in Tampere and Helsinki), one company, Valimo, finally called me up for an interview. The way things go around here, it is prudent that you fix a date as quickly as possible and haul your ass to that company. So, on Thursday evening, I packed my bag (which was borrowed from Haroon ofcourse) and headed straight to the train station. I performed feats of self photography both in front and inside the train which you can view in awe below:

It was my first time in the train and luckily I had brought The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which helped me pass the time, but not much as reading always gives me a headache! 2 hours later, I finally found myself in Helsinki, where Ijaz had come to pick me up (Ijaz works in the same company and previously we were together in the trip to Sweden). He helped a lot by telling me about how I can get the bus pass for a day, making excellent chicken karhai, providing a place to sleep and then taking me to Valimo in the morning.

In the morning, I reached Valimo 90 minutes before the time for the interview as I had no choice but to go to Valimo with Ijaz. Again, waited for 90 minutes and read Hitchhiker's guide again to pass time. Finally, got myself interviewed and then a coding test. Both went quite well, but it made me tired, hungry and thirsty. I do not know about you guys but if there is an interview, test or an exam, I can never eat or drink before that because my body can't hold stuff when I am tense and I need to run off to the loo from time to time.

Finally, when the test was over, me, Ijaz and the the guy who evaluated my coding test went along to a place and had a good pizza over there. It was one of the few good pizzas that I have ever had here in Finland. Then they left me on a tram station from where I took the tram 4T, which took me to the city center. I dropped off in front of the train station and then walked around it, seeing places, these pictures are from there:

 I wanted to see Helsinki, but due to constant raining, night time, slippery snow and water puddles, it wasn't that much fun. But as I was walking around, I came across a Microsoft's Windows Vista Convention to which I decided to spend around 2 hours looking around. There were XBox 360 stands as well and then a lot of laptops to try windows Vista on. I think that Microsoft have a winner in Vista and it looks better than ever. While I was working on one of the laptops an old Finnish guy comes and starts talking to me about Vista. I tell him once that I do not speak Finnish, but he asked me something else and I said again, "Minä ei puhu Suomea." but the old man was relentless. So I offered him my seat, and said, "Ole Hyvä", which means, "Be good" which is also a way of saying, "Please" and then kept on saying, "Hyvä" which means,"Good" and got the old dude working on Vista as I slipped away. All in all, the place was fun and seeing all that high tech stuff in one place was really like walking in a Geek's paradise. The pictures below did not come out to be great, but that's all I could manage.

After that convention, I headed off towards the trainstation as it was getting close to 7 PM and I had to go home too. So I got a train for 19:06 PM and went in and sat in a seat. In Finland, there are two types of Trains. Ones that are really fast and get you to Helsinki in 110 minutes and then there are those which get you to Helsinki in 130 minutes. The fast train takes 13 euros while the slow train takes 10 euros. The fast train gives you a designated seat and the slow train is on first come first serve basis, which means, get in and quickly grab a good seat.

Now, I came to Helsinki in the slow train and took the fast train on the way back. Owing to my experience for the slow train, I just sat on a seat, only to find out 2 stations later that I had sat on a reserved seat, which was quite embarrassing. Its really ironic because almost the entire train was empty, two to three passengers in one van and I had to sit on a seat that was occupied :(. Anyway, I got home by 9 PM, grabbed a fish burger meal from Macdonald's and then went off to home.

The very next day was the day for moving from Hervanta to Lukonmäki and that deserves a blog of its own, which will come right after this blog or if I am late in getting my net up in Lukonmäki, then I guess it might have already gone through your eyes.

Oh and now you must be thinking that when I'll get to know about the job? Its going to be Monday or Tuesday when I will find out, so keep your fingers crossed.

I am finally moving to a new place, fro my old one called Hervanta. I got my hands on a digital camera which was lent to me by Chienting as she ahd a spare. So I went around taking pictures of where I was and how it looked during winters. This was one rare day when the sun was out so I went out to take pictures (Not a good idea in -10 C temperature). So before my hands froze, I ended up taking these pictures:

This is the room where I spent my time from Oct 2005 till February 2007. It was on 6th floor of the building called Mikontalo.

This is the kitchen which taught me how to cook.

This was the view on that day right as i stepped out... this is too less snow by Finnish standards... believe me! And here we have Mikontalo, where I lived. By the way it was just one block of the four buildings that made up Mikontalo. I lived in the D-Block.

This is another view to Mikontalo. This is almost as far from Mikontalo as it was from Technical University of Tampere (TUT) which is coming in the next picture. This was an ideal place to be if you studied in TUT.

Lo and behold! TUT! Look at the unadultered snow! Still, its not as great a university as my university, that is, University of Tampere (UTA).

And here is the small lake to which I used to go for a jog. the ice on it was so thick that you could walk on it. People were happily skiing on it. And there is a jogging track around the lake I showed above. It looks like a big lake but this track only allows you a 7 minute jog around the lake, so I used to do 21 minutes on it. Later I found out that I could jog much more, one time I jogged for an hour and could still jog more.

So this is about it for the place I call Hervanta. There were many other places to show but with this weather I do not feel like going to those places just to take a picture. Maybe if I can stay in Tampere till summers, I might come to this place again. Still, I have 3 days left so maybe I just might push myself into doing it. Till that time comes, this is all from me for the time being.

I might have informed you guys that I have to move from the place where I am right now by the end of May. That required me to give an appliction asap to TOAS (the student housing foundation) so that they can arrange for a new apartment for me. I did that on 1st of January and recently I found out that a friend of mine was moving out from the same locality to where I wanted to shift. So today I went with him to the TOAS office and asked if I could move into his place as he was leaving. As it turns out, I can move and in reality, I will move out on 1st of March and will stay there till 1st of September, if otherwise, I get a job and stay here for a longer duration.

Even though I should move there by 1st of March, but since the good bloke is moving at the end of this month, I will start shifting my stuff to that place slowly over the next month. That place is quite close to where Jon and Chienting live and then there are two shahzads there already and one of them knows quite a lot of Symbian, so it will be a good time to move as I really need to learn some Symbian.

I saw The Departed, which was a good movie comign out of Hollywood after a long time. I also got to see Saw and will see Saw III soon, as I have already seen Saw II.

Oh and in other news, Kutts finally came back from Pakistan after an abscence of more than a month. With his bigger than double decker size, more hairy than a hibernating bear and lazy like a hangign sloth, nature brought him a cyst on his bum (although he says that it was on his back, but still I say that it was on his bum, why? because its more fun that way). Anyway, he got that operated upon and thus got himself delayed in pak for 9 extra days. Although his entire presence went unnoticed during the whole time he was away, he was remembered for three times, 1) when we wanted an extra player in brood, 2) when we wanted an extra player in quake and today when he messaged in the morning to bug me like he did before going home. Oh god! why that suffering once again?

Its here! What? see the video and find out, its not to be told in words.

You know, sometimes you feel like kicking yourself for just not being bright enough for thinking that if something has ben released by yahoo, microsoft or google, there might be some good alternative in one of the three. I had taken a lot of pics and they were taking up space on my hard drive, so I thought that I should upload them online. I picked flickr as it did help me upload a lot of pics and also in good resolution.

It is indeed pretty neat because it helps you upload 200 pictures and in good quality and since it allows you to login using your yahoo account, its pretty easy to access because it has its own software that you download and it helps uploading your pictures directly to flickr with a press of a button. Its only then that I find Picasa.

The best thing about picasa is that, its by Google (need I say more?). Which means that you have insane amount of upload space (250 MBs) and if you pay 25$ it goes up to 6 GB, not to mention that it has its own uploading software. I have not tested it yet, but I am certain that it will be good. With the type of pictures I upload, I think that I will upload about 6000 pictures before I run out of my free upload space. Anyway, I will be shifting to picasa now but the sad part is that, all my previous pictures are in flickr :(.

In all this, there is one software that totally rocks when it comes to compressing pictures... Enter JPEGCompress. You can get it from here. Its amazingly small, free, very very intuitive and has one great feature known as Batch Process. What you need to do is that, just tell it where your pictures lie... give it the directory path. It will then just ask you what the name of the pictures should be and where should it put them after compression. You set the quality of the pictures by using the slider (I normally keep it at 50) and then just let it do its work. It compresses all the pictures in no time. Gone are the days when you need to compress every picture individually. Try it and you'll be happy.

Oh God! If there was ever a moment when you could say that, it definitely was so a few days back. I think it was 1st of this month when me along with a friend, Haroon went to the city center to get something done. It all started well, we got down in time, took the 30 number bus, arrived at TOAS (student housing) I got to ask for a new apartment and was told that I will get it by May (damn, that's long! anyway, it better be in May or I'll have to find shelter someplace else). Then we went to the police station as Haroon needed to inquire about his Visa. This is where the Finnish etiquettes totally shine. We got there but since a guy was already busy, so we had to wait. Hence we sat down close to the International affairs counter. After a while a fat guy (looked Arabic) walks in and stands close to the counter, finding the opportunity that since we sat, he gets to go first. me and my friend was really pissed at him for doing so, but what could we do. Anyway, when the lady handling the first guy got free, she told the guy that we were there earlier so she called us first :) Its time like these that you really love Finland for its fairness.

Anyway, then we got to the transport office from where Haroon needed to get some things done and on our way back, we decided to go to our favourite coffee shop, from where we always have cake and coffee. I had a cake and a hot chocolate while haroon had a cake and a coffee. We sat there for about 30 minutes, enjoyed ourselves and then decided to go to LIDL (If you guys do not know, LIDL is the lifeline of all the students. Its the cheapest supermarket in Finland and surprisingly, it has good food stuff. In other markets, you can find cheap stuff but then its of cheap quality, but here you find cheap stuff of good quality.

So when we were about 50 meters away from LIDL, my stomach started to give strange sounds.. I thought it was ok and went ahead into LIDL but the moment I stepped into LIDL, sanity left me totally as my whole life flashed before my eyes. A pressure so immense that even the Tarbela dam will find it hard to contain. I am telling you, it was a new definition of control that I learned that way as I made my way to the nearest Macdonald :). The most funny part was when I finally reached the washroom, only to find out that it requires a 1 euro coin to open. I had 2 euro coins which were too big (emphasis on big) to fit in the hole. Imagine, a catastrophic Tsunami and you have to get some change from the counter :). The most fun part was when I put the coin in, it stuck in the middle and when I pulled, the door wasn't even locked and only then did I hear the coin fall down :) so in short, I did not have to take the change :/.

Well, I do not really need to explain the tried and tested law of gravity but you can all rest assured that all the adventure came to an end at that time. From that day on, I think its a good idea to always keep change of all shapes and sizes in your wallet. You never know when a coin may provide you with salvation.

This blog comes a bit late as I had been a bit lazy in starting the whole blogging business again. Anyway, this marks as the new year blog so I will keep the entire story about that. Christmas is pretty dull in Finland and with no snow anywhere its duller than ever. The only good day in all this is the new year day. You can call it a good day as you can see more people roaming around the city center. The truth is, people actually like to go into all the different bars, get drunk and then go home. Thats about it about the new year celebration. There isn't even a new year countdown ... although it would've sounded strange to hear them countdown in Finnish like, ... nelja, kolme, kaksi, yksi (Yes, this was definitely a cheap way to tell everyone that I know the finnish counting).

These are the two pics from the bar, in the first, I am with Jon and in the second I was sitting right next to the bar counter but you can hardly see it. Ofcourse, the camera was of Chienting, who was taking all the pics.

And here is the Tampere city center during the new year's eve. I am standing in the middle of the road.

So we had a good time at the bar as there was a live band playing. they totally messed up With or Without You and Boulevard of Broken Dreams though. Anyway for 1.5 euros, its not a bad entertainment :D

After we got a bit bored of the bar, there was nothing left to do except grabbing a taxi and heading home. We stod in line for 15 minutes and when our turn was about to come, a lady came and asked us if we would like to share the rent with her and a friend. Its always good to share rent as taxis do cost a lot. 7 euros just to get your ass in a taxi and then the real charging starts. Its good in a way cause if you are going far away, the taxi does need to come back to the stand. It all works a bit differently and we do not get to do any bargain :).

When we dropped the lady off, she was nice enough to pay for our rent too so we came home practically free. Well, this was an okayish trip but thats about it .. the amount of entertainment that you can get in Tampere. Maybe I might get to find more things once my pocket is a bit heavy. Will that day ever come?

I came across this cool software for making your own crossword puzzle. I think I'll keep this for  my gre prep as this was one of those project ideas that I always wanted to work on. Anyway the software is called EclipseCrossword and you can it it from here. I made a cross word out of it and I think a Brood player who knows all the giki terminologies might be able to solve it. Enjoy!

I had yet another interview today. It seemed like it went fine. the work right now is more project based. The company called Suvisoft is going to hire me into doing some projects. The work will range from writing documentation to software development. The guy said that he will contact me in a while ... did not give a specific date though. Lets see how it turns out.

In other news, Kutts, Rajjo and Me are having amazing fun in Quake 2. Almost 8 years since we started playing it in multiplayer and it still is great fun

You browse through many TV shows and nothing appeals to you after a while. Prison Break had a great start and it was all set for a good one season release and then it got changed into a multi series drama and it lost its touch. The firs season was all about getting out of jail and the ingenuity shown my Micheal (not to mention too much wishful thinking). Now its all about senseless running and no plan.

Then we have Battlestar Galactica,... it had a nice start, was supposed to be a miniseries, got funding and they made it a multi-season series and now the dragging around is showing its signs with bad stories and a dying plot.

In all this competition, Veronica Mars is holding its own with a good story line, nice puzzles and a touch of humour given here and there. So, although its not amazing, but still its pretty good.

Then we have DEXTER! Not that stupid dexter's laboratory dexter but the series about dexter the serial killer. He is a guy who gets urges to kill, but he had been trained into channel his urges in the direction of good. Seems a bit just another show sort of a material, but in reality, it starts well and after 10th episode it has gained so much momentum that me along with all my friends who are fans of the show are dying to see the next episode. Its the best show on TV these days. Telling anything more about the show will spoil the fun so I leave it to you to form your own opinion.

I write this blog because I just had a weird day. As you recall that a few days ago, I was complaining about the loss of sleep and the hopeless schedule I got myself into. Well, last night I felt that If I slept at that time (11 pm), I have a good chance to have a peaceful sleep. And it was really one good peaceful sleep. I woke up at 630 am, a bit early for my taste, but I was still a bit sleepy and the body was aching a bit. Anyway, since it was time for fajr, I thought that i should say the prayers. So I got up, said my prayers and tried sleeping. You know that once you wake up and say your prayers, sleep is one thing that deceives you. Even though I thought I needed more sleep, but I could not sleep at that time. So I stayed awake and since i was not in the mood of doign anything, I play C&C Generals (I bought the original game and its expansion for 15 euros, so its quite fun with the cool mods).

So it hit 11 am and it was time to get ready for the lecture so i was out waiting fo the bus at 1140 am. surprisingly, i was fresh, fresh like the way I used to feel when i was 16 and not to mention energetic. I went to the class and the whole class was spent easily and I was quite sharp the whole time. Then me and Chienting (a taiwanese friend) went to this coffee shop to have some coffee and chocolate cake (woohoo!) I spent 10 euros just on eating cake and having a coffee, it was expensive, but MAN! was it good. So we talked and talked and then the thai friend Thanya showed up and then we talked a bit more. Then we left that place at 530 pm and I headed home.

(I had done shopping before going to the coffee shop), so when i got back i put chicken to cook (hmmm.. achaar gosht) and chatted (was still surprised that i was fresh). Then jon came online and we talked. he had just given an interview at Flanders and we exchanged questions and ideas. Then, I realised that we had not met for a while so i suggested that we should meet sometime and then he suggested, why shouldnt we take a walk? To which i agreed and we were out and about at around 8 pm. We walked for some 60 minutes or more and in the meanwhile a friend called and told me to talk to him when I got home. Anyway, Jon came to my place and we watched robot chicken together which was quite hilarious.

When he departed, I talked to this friend of mine (yes, I will keep him a secret .. buhhahaah) asked me if i was willing to work on a project. I just do not get it, why do they ask when they know that i am always ready to work on a project :D provided that it pays well. So he let me know that there migth be an opportunity so he will forward my name if my services are required. 14 months of job searching and now an opportunity lands in my lap when I havent even tried for it. Although its not confirmed but still its something i thought that never would happen (Also, I was still fresh).

So after eating dinner with an episode of supernatural, I got down to work on the project management course. Working hours calculation, writing reports, answering mails, correctign working hours, notifying everyone ... its one problematic course. I can bet that if Shikamaru from Naruto ever got such a job he will just quit it or devise an intelligent strategy to avoid it.

3 am, I finish the work and lo and behold, I am still a bit fresh, I mean i can feel that my eyes are gettign heavy, but i still have the energy to say all the missed 3 prayers, + isha. So I say the prayers then and all with full concentration. Is this really me doing all this? I do not know what has happened to me, but it really feels good. So, with U2 playing in the background, i think that i should make a log of it right now while my strength remains. who knows what tomorrow might bring? So its 4 am now and i still fell that I can go on, but I should not push my luck. time to sleep after staying awake for about 22 hours. tomorrow is thankfully a holiday so I can sleep for long. I just hope that God maintains this strength of mine.

Also, Sameer's sister had a serious operation a few days back. he tells me that everything is ok now and she is recovering. It wouldn't hurt us if we pray for her quick recovery and Sameer's quick chussi :D.

now I end this blog with these golden words:

Supernatural rox, buffy sux!

Lately I have not been having much sleep during the night. Maybe its stress, maybe I need to start working out but all in all, its pretty annoying. I am one of those guys whose whole day is ruined if they do not get enough sleep during the night. I do hope that I get out of this problem soon.

Nothing much has happened since the last time I wrote anything. you might have imagined that my life has become kind of dry ... well yes, it has been dry and will remain dry for some time. Winter vacations are coming in a month's time so that will give me some time to relax.

I started watching this new series called "Supernatural". It might look like a buffy or angel clone but I will put it close to the movie Constantine in overall production values. Saw the first two episodes and they were not bad. I plan to keep watching it. It already has a second season running so I guess that it got popular.

time to pray and then to work for now.

Another exam done and another result obtained. This time, its another 5 for the Computational Systems Biology II course. This should really lift my CGPA up and just makes my Transcript look even better. I had been waiting for this result to come so that I can finally go to TUT (another university) and grab my score from there and then go to my own university and submit this score so that I can get credits for it. I also talked to the teacher for the scientific writing course and he said that he hasn't still checked and graded the papers that were submitted in that course. So anyway, once I submit these scores, my credit count will stand at 50. With the software project management course going on and since I plan to get 12 credits for that course, so 12 credits for that, 5 credits for the Information Visualisation project course, 5 credits for the New Interaction Techniques course and my credit count will stand at 22. 3 credits for the introduction to thesis writing course will make that to 25 and 5 more credits in the last semester should make it up for all the course work credits that I require for my MS. I can take 3 credits for the Finnish course too but i scored horribly in it, that is got 1/5  thats 50% score :/ so I will try not to get it into my transcript and take another course in its place.

On the other note, it snowed like anything over here .. so much so that transportation had become a problem. I was stuck in the university for 30 minutes in the cold just waiting for the bus. When it finally came, it was jam packed, so could not get in. I then had to walk to the city center and grab a bus from over there and even then I had to stand the whole way back.

Again, I think that snow is much better than rain ... atleast you dont get wet in it and nothign beats a snow fight :). I wish I had a camera so that I can roam around the city and take pictures. It looks quite beautiful with all this fresh snow around.

I am also downloading Doctor Who. Its a new sci-fi series and maybe it will be good. It has a second season running so that means that its first season went well. Speaking of Sci-fi .. when it comes to space ship simulators, nothing beats Descent Freespace II. We were having this discussion on the Alumni mailing list of GIKI and then I found out that this game is free to be distributed, yes that is right.. original game freely available for anyone to download and play. You can grab it from here. I can bet that you will not be disappointed and with the open source project of freespace going strong, it enhances the graphics of this game by manifolds. Its a must have to enhance your playing experience. If only I had hard disk space, i would have downloaded and played this game again.