Two Days of Night
29th of August, 2004
Here I go again. Yet another entry in my journal; I know it's been quite some time since the last entry but I've been quite busy lately. First off you might be impressed by my title for this entry, 'Two Days of Night'. Actually it's referred to two things which happened to me these past few days.
First off; about a week ago, the lights had gone out. Nothing new here in Pakistan it happens on almost a regular basis. Mostly they're only out for a few minutes but sometimes longer. Most of the times you just get trips which go off for about a few seconds and then come back, those are really annoying. But that day it was different; I'd been through major black outs before ever since my arrival here. These were like huge black outs that went for hours and sometimes days! That day it was no different but what made it special was the magnitude of the black out. You see it went for almost 8 hours and we weren't very surprised until we read the newspaper the next day. It said that all of Lahore, that's were I live (second largest city in Pakistan), was under a huge blanket of darkness! It had no contact with the outside world for almost 8 hours, no electricity, water supply, gas supply and anything else that had to do with lights! Man that was BIG!!
We were really shocked after that because that was in a way a first. It had happened before but that was roughly an hour or so, so it wasn't a big thing.
Well that scratches one day off, now on to the other shadow of darkness that came on us. It happened just a few days ago. A very close relative of mine died! He wasn't very old only 57 and that's no age to die. I had never met him but I knew from what everyone always told me that he was a great person. Unlike in Christian and other religious funerals, our Muslim funerals are a bit different. First the relatives come and sit near the deceased; they sit there until the prayers are called. All that time they mourn. Then once the call for prayer is given, the deceased is taken to the mosque where a special prayer is prayed on his/her behalf. Then they take him/her to be buried. Mourning continues but by now most of it subsides.
I know funerals are supposed to be emotional but this one was a big too much. His family members, relatives and friends were just screaming out and crying like hell. This shows how much people appreciated him. The weirdest thing was that he was perfectly normal as everyone says. He had no pains no worries nothing. Then early in the morning he went to get some groceries and just fell of a heart attack… well anyways I don't think I should give a lot of details. It is a bit of a delicate topic.
On to a lighter note; I've cancelled all work for v3 of my site. I've decided to go for v2.5 for now maybe I'll keep it going for a few months. I've had a lot of great reviews from friends/family on the new layout Helix. I'd gone through several different designs but this one just seemed to click and the forum is also turning out nice. Four members in total right now, including me, but all forums start off slow.
I might be working of a v2.8 or so of my site. No changes to the layout just some extra stuff. I mean I finally got rid of all the bugs I had so I figured I could add some new technologies to my site. Maybe I'll make a friend's page or a post it corner or something. Oh well anything that'll attract attention towards the site.
Oh heck, I've talked enough. Guess it's time for me to head back for my cell. There's a little patch of wall left in a corner I've had my eye on, maybe I'll add some neat scribbles to it! Cheers!