London’s day of innocence!

Guardian article:

After reading this I wish I was not stuck outside London. I have been living in London for a few years now, and yearned to see a different side of the city.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

“For a day at least, Londoners returned to a forgotten innocence. Yesterday the headlines howled about how £2bn would be lost yesterday thanks to public transport disruption. Two words: So. What. We’re in the middle of a credit crunch and £2bn is the sort of money a hedge-fund trader might find in the lining of his Armani suit. Yesterday we stopped measuring our lives in coffee spoons, overdrafts and balance of payments deficits. It felt good.

We needed the snow to remind us of that innocence. We needed it to remind us of who we are. We are not just homo-economicus, we can’t be defined by the size of our negative equity, the burden of our personal debt, or numbers of en-suites. We need something more this winter than cowering at home noting down how many times Gordon Ramsay swears on Channel 4. Our new year resolutions are broken, our jobs insecure, our pensions worthless, our spirits crushed by January’s post-Christmas gloom. We needed something to lift our spirits, to give us the excuse to play to no discernible economic benefit.

And yesterday here it came, free as air, falling on to my bare head as I walked down the canal towpath. I was doing what a human being should do now and again: stare. A Spanish man and I watched a heron dive from the ice into water that is starless and bible black. Would it ever resurface? What could it find down there to eat? We did what London hardly ever allows: exchanged the conspiratorial glances and then resumed the satisfyingly economically unproductive business of staring.”

Growing up in Lahore in the 80s ..

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this on the Tech Lahore blog. It brought back fond memories.

Read in full here

Related posts: here, here and here

To start off, I am incredibly lucky. I was born to a privileged family in Lahore, Pakistan. I attended the best schools around (Yes, a proud Aitchisonian!) and was exposed to people from all parts of the world at a very early age. My parents were more focused on making sure their kids got the best of everything – including their own time – than on anything else. They always had time for us. My father would spend hours upon hours painstakingly explaining arcane concepts to me, narrating ancient history, telling us stories from the Quran or explaining mechanics, physics and math for which I really had no grounding. But because I asked, he humoured me. And I did pick things up.

My mother encouraged me to be as curious and creative as I wanted. Even in the days when the latest LEGO sets were hard to come by in Lahore, she would have a friend or an acquaintance somehow arrange to send my favourite pick from the catalog; even if it had to be shipped from London. Yes, like I said, I was (and am) extremely lucky. My childhood was, in many ways, absolutely amazing because it was so comfortable, stimulating and love-filled that I really never even dreamt about wanting to be in someone else’s shoes. And it was this feeling… of NOT wanting to be in anyone else’s shoes, the sense that I would never ever want to change who I was or where I came from, that was the seed of a sense of self, and a sense of identity that I have built myself, and my life around.

How the city effects the brain

This is a thought provoking article on the effects of city life on the human brain. I am sure equally heavy cost is payed in terms of the changes city life brings about in the way we think and feel (emotional and spiritual changes).

I am not saying mass migrate to non-city areas, I just want to emphasize the need to have a balanced ‘environmental’ diet. As I have mentioned in one of the earlier posts, our city of Lahore, is a place one should venture out of very regularly.

The article

Man tries to pay bill with spider drawing

Link

This is soo funny!

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s popularity in Muslim countries

I came across some very interesting facts recently. I have not researched enough but looking at the initial data, I was surprised to find that Shaykh Hamza is becoming increasingly popular in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, UAE and Egypt.

According to google trends ‘Hamza Yusuf’ is used as a search term the most in this order:

1. Pakistan
2. United Arab Emirates
3. Egypt
4. Morocco
5. United Kingdom
6. Saudi Arabia
7. Malaysia
8. South Africa
9. Canada
10. Australia

Now, that is impressive! Considering that our conventional wisdom will have us believe that the elite of these countries are corrupt, this result comes as a surprise. Internet usage is still exclusive to the urban centers.

Traffic info on www.zaytuna.org from alexa gives the following results:

The highest rank of Zaytuna in Bangladesh!!

Such trends give me hope

Useful Links

Brother Hamza has a very good website focused on the miracle of the Quran http://theinimitablequran.com/

He also maintains a very useful blog. Link

Kipling – Inspiring poem

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

Really Stunning pictures

Here.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf ..talk on education

This has to be one of the best talks given by the Shaykh. Although, it is titled Traditional Education, it is not about traditional education. The first few are actually Shaykh Hamza’s reaction to some of the criticism he has received (In my opinion all of it unfairly). Listen for yourself because it is very good and if I write more, I might put you off listening to it.

Link to part 1

David Foster Wallace..

David Foster Wallace, the novelist, essayist and humorist best known for his 1996 novel “Infinite Jest,” was found dead Friday night at his home in Claremont, according to the Claremont Police Department. He was 46. Read the transcript of a speech he gave. Here.