Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Things I have, Things I've lost
The dustiest thing in my room is a black hardcover plastic binder that sits under squeaky, my ailing bed:
I kept a binder at work where I made notes about known fixes and solutions to various issues I dealt with at work, just as refrences. It contained loose leaf paper notes, jotted with my writing and with many different inks and lead. After the loose leaf there were three plastic folders within the binder. The first one, I used to slip in printed notes handed out for troubleshooting; important company handouts were in the second one and random work related notices went in the third.
I have now been with the firm for four years, first two of which I had kept and updated the binder. I didn't bother keeping it or carrying it to work after that. Basically it symbolized the approximate time I stopped caring. It used to be a workplace, then just a job, and now it has dwindled to the status of a lum sum paycheck.
The dustiest thing in my room is a black hardcover plastic binder that sits under squeaky, my ailing bed:
I kept a binder at work where I made notes about known fixes and solutions to various issues I dealt with at work, just as refrences. It contained loose leaf paper notes, jotted with my writing and with many different inks and lead. After the loose leaf there were three plastic folders within the binder. The first one, I used to slip in printed notes handed out for troubleshooting; important company handouts were in the second one and random work related notices went in the third.
I have now been with the firm for four years, first two of which I had kept and updated the binder. I didn't bother keeping it or carrying it to work after that. Basically it symbolized the approximate time I stopped caring. It used to be a workplace, then just a job, and now it has dwindled to the status of a lum sum paycheck.
Monday, August 21, 2006
After careful and meaningless consideration of an hour or so, it struck me like a jew strikes an unattended penny on the floor.
It appears that a ducks perception of me is based on wether or not I have a piece of bread. Which makes perfect sense, since it does not have the ability to actaully buy a loaf of bread. Mostly because it has no hands.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
The Haunting, I believed...
a short ass story
The evening was fun. I followed her all evening until she sat on yellow sofa, hard, shiny and plasticy sofa. The party was happening and full of night heat. She was gorgeous, and the way she carried herself appealed to me. I gathered my courage and I stood next to her. I think she offered me to sit, so I did. The seat had curvature on the sides, which helped me slide in on the chair, eventually bumping into and stopping next to her. She didn’t mind, I imagined, considering the guy sitting on her other side had quite some space in between. We sat side to side leaning forward, tilting and trying to understand each others words, I remember.
Then the music got louder, it forced us to make the conversation more intimate and we kept leaning closer and closer to converse, if I wasn’t mistaken. A cool breeze touched us under the open air, but I didn’t feel it. Her hair mildly moving, told me it was a breeze while the goose bumps on her arms told me it was cool.
We had a moment of pause. She looked right through me. I leaned back. I said something I don’t remember. She leaned back next to me, and joined me in looking to the sky, where I was looking. I said its beautiful out and you can actually see the moon and one whole star...or two. It took her a while and then she chuckled while gazing up at the moon still. She must have felt my arm slide behind her shoulder…she was waiting for it I supposed, since she did not protest the act. She eased her head on my arm and continued her staring at the moon, as I studied the infinite number of complex emotions on her face. A face that glowed in the candle’s light while shaded by the moons'. She closed her eyes.
Then something awful happened. Suddenly a man in a blue suit appeared from the crowded darkness, and I saw his hand come towards me. I did not see it coming until his hand went through my chest and gently touched her head. She opened her eyes and picked her head up off the sofa cushion she laid her head on. She smiled and seemed to recognize him and he helped her up. This neglect filled me with rage. Blood boiled in my veins as I swung at the man with full force. My fist went through both of them and ended up knocking the picture hanging behind the man in the blue suit. They turned around, confused and went about. I shouted at them, cursed them out, and watched them get in a yellow taxi that took them away.
What just happened? Its all coming back to me now, and this I know for sure: I followed her alright, and I sat next to her for sure…but I never actually spoke to her; I never felt the wind; she did not lean on my hand. She did not even know of my existence in fact. Ah, this happens all the time. See the thing is, I was there a month ago; at a similar party in the same exact location. I came in a red Lexus with my closest friends and all that I remember vividly. What I forget, is that I left that night in a plastic bag, in an ambulance, leaving behind weeping acquaintances. I overdosed while snorting that night and since then I have never set foot out side this place.
This cycle continues every night. My poor memory kills me. I feel alive but then the discovery or the moment takes place, due to an unexpected act like the one I have mentioned above. Usually after the moment, rumors about this club being haunted ring in my head, and become eerily familiar memories of acts I had committed. I usually sit down after this and try to have some water in a glass that I cannot touch. I never believed in ghosts. Now there are no ghosts but me.
Each day this happens. I try, then I remember, then it hits, then I shrink, and I forget.
a short ass story
The evening was fun. I followed her all evening until she sat on yellow sofa, hard, shiny and plasticy sofa. The party was happening and full of night heat. She was gorgeous, and the way she carried herself appealed to me. I gathered my courage and I stood next to her. I think she offered me to sit, so I did. The seat had curvature on the sides, which helped me slide in on the chair, eventually bumping into and stopping next to her. She didn’t mind, I imagined, considering the guy sitting on her other side had quite some space in between. We sat side to side leaning forward, tilting and trying to understand each others words, I remember.
Then the music got louder, it forced us to make the conversation more intimate and we kept leaning closer and closer to converse, if I wasn’t mistaken. A cool breeze touched us under the open air, but I didn’t feel it. Her hair mildly moving, told me it was a breeze while the goose bumps on her arms told me it was cool.
We had a moment of pause. She looked right through me. I leaned back. I said something I don’t remember. She leaned back next to me, and joined me in looking to the sky, where I was looking. I said its beautiful out and you can actually see the moon and one whole star...or two. It took her a while and then she chuckled while gazing up at the moon still. She must have felt my arm slide behind her shoulder…she was waiting for it I supposed, since she did not protest the act. She eased her head on my arm and continued her staring at the moon, as I studied the infinite number of complex emotions on her face. A face that glowed in the candle’s light while shaded by the moons'. She closed her eyes.
Then something awful happened. Suddenly a man in a blue suit appeared from the crowded darkness, and I saw his hand come towards me. I did not see it coming until his hand went through my chest and gently touched her head. She opened her eyes and picked her head up off the sofa cushion she laid her head on. She smiled and seemed to recognize him and he helped her up. This neglect filled me with rage. Blood boiled in my veins as I swung at the man with full force. My fist went through both of them and ended up knocking the picture hanging behind the man in the blue suit. They turned around, confused and went about. I shouted at them, cursed them out, and watched them get in a yellow taxi that took them away.
What just happened? Its all coming back to me now, and this I know for sure: I followed her alright, and I sat next to her for sure…but I never actually spoke to her; I never felt the wind; she did not lean on my hand. She did not even know of my existence in fact. Ah, this happens all the time. See the thing is, I was there a month ago; at a similar party in the same exact location. I came in a red Lexus with my closest friends and all that I remember vividly. What I forget, is that I left that night in a plastic bag, in an ambulance, leaving behind weeping acquaintances. I overdosed while snorting that night and since then I have never set foot out side this place.
This cycle continues every night. My poor memory kills me. I feel alive but then the discovery or the moment takes place, due to an unexpected act like the one I have mentioned above. Usually after the moment, rumors about this club being haunted ring in my head, and become eerily familiar memories of acts I had committed. I usually sit down after this and try to have some water in a glass that I cannot touch. I never believed in ghosts. Now there are no ghosts but me.
Each day this happens. I try, then I remember, then it hits, then I shrink, and I forget.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Need a hot Pakistani secretary without upsetting your wife? Easy.
A couple of months ago, I had a delicious lunch (at Manhattan’s Jaiya Thai, which seems to hold a monopoly on the Thai-food-for-desis market) with a friend who had just been to Pakistan on business. He told me about a company in D.C. which had outsourced its receptionist to Pakistan via videoconferencing. Mitra Kalita published the story in the Washington Post:
In a chic downtown lobby across the street from the Old Executive Office Building, Saadia Musa answers phones, orders sandwiches and lets in the FedEx guy. And she does it all from Karachi, Pakistan.As receptionist for the Resource Group, Musa greets employees and visitors via a flat screen hanging on the lobby’s wall. Although they are nine hours behind and nearly 7,500 miles away, her U.S.-based bosses rely on her to keep order during the traffic of calls and meetings…
She turns the camera — which is usually focused on her face — to offer a view of her surroundings in Karachi: a lounge, a cafeteria, a pool table… Just then, a phone call interrupts her. It is 1:15 a.m. where Musa sits. “Good afternoon,” Musa says brightly. “Thank you for calling the Resource Group.”
Musa went through some unique call center training:
“A smile can be heard,” Musa recited in an interview via her flat screen. She worked as a call-center operator before being promoted to secretary. “Posture can make a difference. A dress code makes a difference.”
The company’s Pakistani-American founder, Zia Chishti (PDF), previously cofounded the company which does Invisalign braces. He was born in the U.S. but grew up in Pakistan:
… Chishti co-founded the Resource Group three years ago after selling his shares in a California dental-imaging company he had also founded. That company, Align Technology Inc., left its operations in Lahore, Pakistan, after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and Chishti took the abandoned office filled with laid-off workers and asked them to trust his vision for a call-center empire.
Wahabis, Propaganda by the ignorant Western media and Indian progapanda machines haven't made it easy on foriegn investors that are interested and recognize potential:
… having been escorted by armed guards, Beringer acknowledged he did not feel totally safe. Being a Westerner made him feel, at times, self-conscious. “There was a bomb threat while we were there,” he said.
Although Pakistan remains far behind India in outsourcing, but its still impressive:
Pakistan remains just a blip in the offshoring industry, generating an estimated $550 million in revenue from software and related services last year, according to the Pakistan Software Houses Association. India, meanwhile, generated $12.8 billion.
But Chishti himself reports $170M of revenue in two years. Even if he made ample seed capital from Invisalign, that’s an impressive figure. The possibilities are endless. Besides, phillipines it taking a lot of business from India because they can broker a better accent then Indians. Pakistanis can generally guise their accent better and adapt to the American/British ones, in a much more efficient manner, plus the labor cost is cheap as well.
A couple of months ago, I had a delicious lunch (at Manhattan’s Jaiya Thai, which seems to hold a monopoly on the Thai-food-for-desis market) with a friend who had just been to Pakistan on business. He told me about a company in D.C. which had outsourced its receptionist to Pakistan via videoconferencing. Mitra Kalita published the story in the Washington Post:
In a chic downtown lobby across the street from the Old Executive Office Building, Saadia Musa answers phones, orders sandwiches and lets in the FedEx guy. And she does it all from Karachi, Pakistan.As receptionist for the Resource Group, Musa greets employees and visitors via a flat screen hanging on the lobby’s wall. Although they are nine hours behind and nearly 7,500 miles away, her U.S.-based bosses rely on her to keep order during the traffic of calls and meetings…
She turns the camera — which is usually focused on her face — to offer a view of her surroundings in Karachi: a lounge, a cafeteria, a pool table… Just then, a phone call interrupts her. It is 1:15 a.m. where Musa sits. “Good afternoon,” Musa says brightly. “Thank you for calling the Resource Group.”
Musa went through some unique call center training:
“A smile can be heard,” Musa recited in an interview via her flat screen. She worked as a call-center operator before being promoted to secretary. “Posture can make a difference. A dress code makes a difference.”
The company’s Pakistani-American founder, Zia Chishti (PDF), previously cofounded the company which does Invisalign braces. He was born in the U.S. but grew up in Pakistan:
… Chishti co-founded the Resource Group three years ago after selling his shares in a California dental-imaging company he had also founded. That company, Align Technology Inc., left its operations in Lahore, Pakistan, after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and Chishti took the abandoned office filled with laid-off workers and asked them to trust his vision for a call-center empire.
Wahabis, Propaganda by the ignorant Western media and Indian progapanda machines haven't made it easy on foriegn investors that are interested and recognize potential:
… having been escorted by armed guards, Beringer acknowledged he did not feel totally safe. Being a Westerner made him feel, at times, self-conscious. “There was a bomb threat while we were there,” he said.
Although Pakistan remains far behind India in outsourcing, but its still impressive:
Pakistan remains just a blip in the offshoring industry, generating an estimated $550 million in revenue from software and related services last year, according to the Pakistan Software Houses Association. India, meanwhile, generated $12.8 billion.
But Chishti himself reports $170M of revenue in two years. Even if he made ample seed capital from Invisalign, that’s an impressive figure. The possibilities are endless. Besides, phillipines it taking a lot of business from India because they can broker a better accent then Indians. Pakistanis can generally guise their accent better and adapt to the American/British ones, in a much more efficient manner, plus the labor cost is cheap as well.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
The sun was low and unobstructed when I pulled into the parking lot. I cut the engine, walked to the end of the pavement, went up one side of the dune and down another, then slipped through a wormhole. Except for a lizard skittering past, the scene was unearthly. Gypsym circled me and mated with the horizon in the distant forever, where dunes rested, and rolled like waves. One look around and I was totally gone. There was the world of maps that I used to belong to (two airports, 40 miles each from my place, walmarts and countless gas stations) and then there was this - a vast rippling crop of searing, sultry nothingness. Mountains on each side lined up, facing each other, saluted their counterparts. As the sun sank behing them, the sand started to settle. Everything went still. The dessert went from sugar toned to the hue of dirty snow, and then the sun dissappeared completely and the sky blew up, it exploded, adn teh sun turned i a lustrous lunar lbue. I wondered some. Then some more, expecting to fly away. To keep grounded, I removed my shoes and dug my feet into the luke warm, and silky sand. The terrain made subtle shifts in shape and color.
I stood on teh surface of this moon and watched another one rise. My brothers and I.
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