Damn, I almost missed the Friday Funnies today cuz I was busy chatting with a couple of my fellow bloggers/Flickretes during my free time. Anyway, I don’t have time to subtitle each of em and instead I’ll post em up and leave the individual titles to you guys. Enjoy.
Before I begin this, I have to admit something. I am 30 years old, I love reading fiction, and yet, before this one, I had never read an Agatha Christie novel. Yes I know, I should be ashamed of myself. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s start.
The last time I was ordering on Liberty Online, I came across Agatha Christie’s novels and decided it was about time I read one and see what all the hype is all about. So I Googled up as to which is her best book, and everywhere it came up to be “And then there were none”. But Liberty didn’t have that book. The second most popular book that came up was Murder on the Orient Express, so I ordered it.
It is a fairly small book compared to the ones that are being churned up by authors nowadays, and once you start, it will be hard to keep it down. As the name suggest it is a murder mystery and it kept me guessing till the end as to who was the murderer.
Now I’ll have to look And then there were none, cuz if the second best book was so good, I wonder what the best one will be like.
If you’ve ever driven in Karachi, the one thing that bothers you most out of the list nuisance are those people who need to catch the bus and who think that it’s their right for the bus to stop wherever they are standing. It is a common sight to see a bus stopping to pick up 3 or 4 different passengers standing apart all within a few steps of each other.
When the government started the Urban Public Transport system with those green air conditioned busses and educated drivers and conductors, there was hope that maybe just maybe things will change, however it was quickly realized that educating the driver and conductor is not going to do any good when our public is full of educated jahils. Pretty soon these busses also started following the old trend of stopping everywhere to pick up the passengers.
This time around CDGK has taken a new path and a couple of months ago and built brand spanking new bus stops throughout the Signal Free Corridor between Sharah-e-Faisal and SITE. These bus stops were not only good to look at but practical as well. They provide a clean place to rest yourself, provide shade from the sun during the day, and a well lighted place after sunset. I was a little skeptical at first, whether our public will use them as previously such exercises from the government had gone down the drain. But this time it was a little different as people started gathering at these stops. So I guess that old saying was correct that if you build them, they will come, or in this case, they will use it 
If you look at my most popular post list, you’ll see that the top 6 posts are from the “Desktop Wallpaper” series that I post from time to time with a combined viewing of over 40,000 views.
This means that most of the people who are coming to this blog are coming to look at pictures instead of reading the words that I write. Now I know what it must be like to be the editor of the Playboy where you put so much effort to write articles, interviews and all but people just buy it for the pictures, no one appreciates the articles. Well, not exactly like Playboy, after all, I don’t post pictures of nude women, but still
Since I am into books, I thought why not write a post about the places where I go to buy these books. I’ve searched on the net trying to find some good bookstores besides the ones that I go to, but sadly, there isn’t much information about them considering the size of the city that we live in. I don’t know whether it’s the lack of interest in reading or the lack of interest of these small bookshop owners into using the net as a marketing avenue. Anyway, here goes, the list of places where I go to satisfy my craving for books. Note that I mostly read fiction, so this list is based on that:
First of all, there’s Liberty Books, the best place to go to buy any book you need, because of their huge collection and helpful staff, although sometimes they are overzealous in their helpfulness and end up chasing the customer away. Of course you have to pay the top buck to get your books from there as not only are they the most expensive, but they don’t usually offer discounts at their stores either. They do have a bargain basement at their Clifton shop near BBQ Tonight, but the books that they have there are just not worth the trip. But if you want something that you can’t find anywhere else, you will probably find it Liberty. Just be ready to pay the top price for it.
Another way to go is to shop at Liberty’s online store, where you get free delivery anywhere in Karachi and you get 20% off on each and every item. The good thing about shopping online is that you can shop at your pace, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, without any pushy sales guy giving you advice on which books you should buy. You can check out the ratings of the books on other websites, read reviews, before making the purchase and if you are on their mailing list you will get regular emails of the new arrivals which you can purchase with a few clicks while sitting in your home/office. Although there are a few kinks in their site, for instance while browsing thru the books, you get three options for sorting the books, i.e., by price, by newest arrival and by title, but these don’t work out the way it should as they only sort out the 12-15 books that are displayed on that particular page and not the entire category.
A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales. The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small. The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible. The little girl said, ‘When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah’. The teacher asked, ‘What if Jonah went to hell?’ The little girl replied, ‘Then you ask him’.
A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s work. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, ‘I’m drawing God.’ The teacher paused and said, ‘But no one knows what God looks like.’ Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, ‘They will in a minute.’
Excellent debut novel from a very promising addition to the growing number of desi writers of English fiction. The thing that hooks you to this one is that it doesn’t go the path which most desi writers take, ala, desis settling down in West, or the post 9/11 world, but the writer takes a very important event in the history of Pakistan, the death of General Zia, and weaves his tale around it, in a humorous way.
The story starts a couple of months before the plane crash that killed Zia, and is told mostly through the perspective of the main character, Under Officer Ali Shigri. It is extremely well written and before you know it you are hooked on to it trying to find out, of all the people who are after Zia, who will get to him first.
The author portrays Zia as a paranoid man who thinks the whole world is out to get him. He also puts in some imaginative scenarios, such as General being ordered by the doctor to take off his pants and bend over while he gives him the anal exam. There’s also a part when “a young man from Arabia named OBL, of the Ladens and Co Constructions” dressed up in a suit going to the Fourth of July celebrations at the American Embassy. Although I’d have loved to read about Perv Mush in it as well, after all, he must have been in the Army during that period.
Anyway, a good read and good addition to my list of must read authors, at least till his next book.
This is the second book I’ve read of Michael Connelly, the last one being The Closers. If you like legal thrillers you are going to love this one. It’s a story of a defense attorney that operates from a Lincoln Town car, so it’s a nice variant from the usual law firms. Although the ending is a bit predictable, you can easily tell halfway thru the book what’s going to happen in the end. A good read and page turner that will keep you hooked.
Last week we went to the new restaurant that opened up recently called “Shan-e-Mughalia”. I had only seen a couple of billboards announcing the opening of this place and didn’t really know what to expect. The only thing that I knew about it was that it was a buffet dinner restaurant like Lal Qila, Salt & Pepper etc.
It’s located near Millennium Mall, the entrance is a small narrow alley that leads to the restaurant. Once inside I was surprised at how huge this place is. They’ve taken the Drive-In cinema and converted it into an open air restaurant. In the middle of the place you have live cooking area along with the buffet and all around it, dinning tables are spread over the green lawn. In one corner there’s the children’s playing area so if you have kids you can just send them over to play there while you enjoy the food.
The food itself wasn’t excellent, however it was good and up to par with other buffet restaurants. On the billboards I saw them proclaiming proudly of some Chef Zakir, I didn’t knew who he was but was told by my wife that he was some hot shot TV chef who hosts cooking programs.
The size of the restaurant has two advantages, first because it’s spread out, you don’t really get that congested feeling that you get at other resturants and secondly, it allows for some really nice breeze, a welcome relief in the hot weather that we have these days. However, I couldn’t help wondering what will happen when you get a table far away from the cooking area and you have to walk all the way to get the food and come back to your table. That will be a lot of exercise to go along with the food.
Anyway, it’s a nice addition to your list of places to eat list, do try it at least once, even if you have to drive all the way from the other end of the city.
Let’s start off with the classifieds, that’s the most fun part in the whole paper. First up you have you run of the mill, weird ad:
….then you have the stupid ad:
…. and then, the disgusting ad:
… of course there are some clever ads in the paper as well, but you won’t find em in the classifieds:
