Below is part of a newsletter I received from a restaurant located in Zamzama, Karachi:
"We will be closed on Monday, 1st January 2007, on account of Eid-ul-Bakr. We will resume our services for dinner at 7:30 pm on Tuesday"
Now my question is, what is an Eid-ul-Bakr? The last time I checked it was Eid-ul-Adha where adha is derived from udhiya that means sacrifice or sacrificial meat. and Eid-ul-Adha would consequently mean the Festival or Celebration of Sacrifice.
Is this the latest in our sub-continent fads where we decide to rename Eid according to the animal we choose to sacrifice? Bring on the Eid-ul-Bael and Eid-ul-Oont as well then!
While we're on the topic, I regret to inform that Chand Raat is not the night before Eid-ul-Adha, Chand Raat of Eid-ul-Adha happens nine nights before the entire nation decides to step out and celebrate it.
Chew On This
Metallically Yours
Am I the only one who finds the mere option of getting a vacuum cleaner to fill the void caused by the absence of a person or his attention extremely worrisome? How can people be touched by this and not offended? What's the point of breaking your back at work if all it amounts to is being able to afford surrogate company for your spouse at home?
Robots That Fill an Emotional Vacuum
By Joel Garreau
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 29, 2006; C01
Comes now the minor miracle of The Week After Christmas, 2006.
These are the days when liberal-arts majors finally crossed the line, falling into an emotional relationship with a real robot. Not one on a movie screen, but one that scoots around their ankles, scaring the bejesus out of their cats -- isn't that fun to watch -- while actually being quite useful.
This week, women all over America -- and not a few men -- are cooing and doting over their surprise hit Christmas present. They swoon when it hides under the couch and plays peekaboo. When it gets tired and finds its way back to its nest, sings a little song and then settles into a nap, its little power button pulsing like a beating heart, on, off, on, off, they swear they can hear it breathe.
It's as cute as E.T., as devoted as R2D2, more practical than a robotic dog and cheaper than some iPods.
It's a Roomba, an artificially intelligent floor-vacuuming 'bot, and this is the year mountains of them rumbled off the shelves not just of nerdistans like the Sharper Image and Brookstone, but of mainstream players like Costco, Sears and Target. They landed on the floors not just of innovators and early adopters, as in the previous four years, but the hip majority targeted by "Saturday Night Live."
More than 2 million of the machines, which range in price from about $150 to $330, have been sold. The day after Christmas, a Roomba was among the top 20 items in Amazon.com's vast home-and-garden section, ahead of the top-selling iron, the top-selling blender, the top-selling coffeemaker and the top-selling George Foreman grill. In Housewares, different models were Nos. 1, 6 and 8, ahead of all the other vacuum cleaners, including the DustBusters.
"The Roomba is wonderful!" says Kazuko Price, a family practice physician in Alexandria who says her patients include a lot of "kids who come in and mess up." Her robot cleans four rooms.
"Well, sometimes he's dumb. He keeps going back to the same place. I kick him." She's named hers Robert.
Why does she thinks it's a boy? "Because I'm a she, that's why. I like guys."
On Epinions.com, a reviewer named "Leisure Larry" writes: "This was the first household item ever I gave my wife as a Christmas present. . . . I don't think many husbands would even dare and fewer would survive giving a vacuum cleaner as a Christmas present. It worked . . . she was thrilled!!"
She's named it Karlson.
These people are onto something. The wonder is only marginally about dust bunnies. It's about robot love.
The cultural moment when the walls between human and artificially intelligent machine began to tumble arguably came a couple of years ago when an "SNL" skit imagined a product called the Woomba, "the first fully automated completely robotic feminine hygiene product." That moment can now be revisited on YouTube.
This week, however, the cinematic moments occur in homes. Visit new Roomba owners and the scene is like those old war movies where you can hear the sounds of conflict, but all you can see are the faces of onlookers, cringing and turning away. The thumps and bumps under the bed finally end and suddenly these faces break into rapture as the Roomba emerges -- covered with dust, but victorious.
You can just envision tomorrow's movie pitch. A vacuuming Roomba falls in love with a Scooba -- the model that is designed to wash floors. They have a child. It is raised to know its place, as a lawn mower. But you know these kids. They have dreams. Real robots roam. It yearns to meander around Mars.
No less an authority than Bill Gates announces in the current issue of Scientific American that 2007 is the year the robotics industry will take off the way the personal computer industry did 30 years ago. "Some of the world's best minds are trying to solve the toughest problems of robotics," he writes. "And they are succeeding."
"We could have made the Roomba cuter," says Colin Angle, the chief executive officer of iRobot, the Massachusetts firm that makes the Roomba and Scooba as well as a host of military robots. "But we wanted to make sure this product was taken seriously. Rather than put a little bunny on top, we hit the efficacy message over and over again, because it appeals to the busy homemaker who has the job that needs to get done.
"And then she decides it's cute. The epiphany is when adults start talking about it as a helpful member of the family. You get them saying 'I do this and Rosie does that' or 'We can't imagine Rosie not helping us.' "
Indeed, the vast majority of Roombas get named, according to Angle. Kids name 40 percent of them when they're barely out of the box. The naming decision leads to questions of whether a Roomba is male or female. Rosie is the most common name, says Angle, after the robotic maid of "The Jetsons."
But the Roomba does seem kind of male, in an eager-to-please fifth-grader way. Adding to its Y-chromosome cred is that you wish it had a little more memory, and that its meanderings weren't so random. There's even a group on Amazon discussing why so many people view Roombas as male, although one contributor says, "Our Roomba is named Rhonda" and accordingly now sports "ponytail stickers and googly eyes on it to give it more personality." You see, the robot used to freak out the owner's toddler daughter. But after they converted it "into Rhonda -- she fell in love with 'her.' "
So, a note to future historians: Not only are our helpful robots no longer the preserve mainly of gear-heads and toy-freaks. This is the year for a lot of mainstream American families that our robots emotionally became one of us.
Carved on Stone
I've finally figured out a way to get Ami to use her gifts instead of saving them to hand them down to future generations: engrave her name on the gift.
The other day I was helping her clean out her closet and she found a really pretty wooden music jewelry box that Aamir Bhai gave her on her birthday some years ago. Ami didn't even remember who gave it to her but I knew it was Aamir Bhai since he gave me a music box and he also remains the reason why I started to like snow-globes as much as I do now.
Ami was about to wrap the box and put it back when I told her that although I usually support her decision to keep stuff she's not keen on using to hand down to her family, I seriously doubt we'll be having another Rehana fond of music boxes in the family anytime soon.
Alhamdo lillah that convinced her and she let me put the box on her end table. Now I hear the sweet tinkle of "Unchained Melody" each time Ami puts on or puts away her often worn rings or necklace.
Now to engrave her name on each sari she insists to keep in the futile hope that I'll wear it someday without wanting to cut it into three distinct pieces for shalwar kameez. Not to forget jewelry and jewelry, and clothes and more jewelry.
The Million Billion Gazillion Reasons Why I Love Sehyr 254,289,037,238
Winter Wonderland
Most people in the West attend Christmas parties and call them holiday parties.
Consequently the gifts they exchange are called holiday gifts.
Living in Pakistan our family receives many cards that give us the "Season's Greetings."
What's all this about anyway? I haven't come across anyone on the face of this earth who sends and receives season's greetings on the blessed seasons of autumn, spring and summer. Then why is winter so ostentatiously celebrated? Season's greetings! Let's join hands in a Communal Icicle Freeze!
It's at times like these that I feel drained just thinking of our ready assimilation towards festivities mainly created by card and gift companies for their personal prosperity. So much that we tend to not think of our two Eids with its due reverence. There is a chand raat for Eid ul Adha ignorantly on the day before Eid even though the moon was sighted nine days before.
MCB's marketing scheme for Eid ul Fitr made my blood boil. What's the big idea behind pressuring people to take out personal loans to buy "more than bangles" or "go designer this Eid?"
It's almost as if we're apologetic about the fact that our Eids are not as glitzy as other occassions strewn all over billboards and Expos at the Expo Center.
What's so enlightening or liberating about assimilation? Albeit towards an idea, a festival or even a sentiment?
Speaking of assimilation, I will write about the KaraFilm Festival soon insha Allah.
Waiting for Number Five
Recently I've felt that various advertising agencies have become lazy with regard to marketing campaigns. My most recent dissatisfaction is with the idea of using the product name as a verb.
Take the local i-mate campaign that starkly asks, "I-mate, do you?"
All right, even if I were to stretch it to the point of favoring it, I would think it to be kinky and almost extra-terrestial in its bluntness. I-mate, do you? I-Tarzan, You-Jane. I-come-in-peace.
Keeping their product image in mind, I can understand their strategy that promotes the imagined and unimagined extents of communications. One can tell what they're driving at with the dimly lit room and the numerous appeals to the senses.
So all in all, it's an effectively executed campaign judging from the mood of the television advertisement until the catch-phrase in the end.
Now take the example of the BMW showroom on main Zamzama Boulevard where the BMW Mini Cooper is on display. Streamers in the showroom read, "Let's Mini."
Now what on earth is that?! Let's Mini?! Let's Mickey! Let's Scooby Doo AND while we're at it, let's do the Hokey Pokey and turn around... Forget all that, let's polka!
What kind of image are they trying to portray with a campaign like that? A convertible for the foozy-
minded? BMW is not about that. It's about smooth cruising, not a happy jig.
Verbs work for catchy words, words that denote various meanings and moods, like jazz or mate and I honestly can't think of anymore at the moment, which is all the more reason that advertising agencies need to chuck out the first idea of making the product name do everything out the window, and come up with another, better idea.
In my extremely brief exposure to graphic designing I learnt the invaluable lesson that the first three or four ideas that a person usually comes up with are the mainstream ideas that almost everyone can think of. The trick behind effective advertising is to discard these initial ideas and come up with catch-phrases less thought of but more often remembered and repeated with spunk.
For I am repeating these slogans, but not with spunk.
Hey gang! Let's Mini!
Bias
Of all the things I hear people say, my heart fills with warmth on hearing sentences that begin with, "My mother says," or "My mother used to say".
Enmity
Someone added me to Faakhir's Fanclub and went to the brutal extent of subscribing me to his newsletter.
Of Eulogies
Why do people refer to so-and-so as having a premature death when no one knows when s/he is going to die?
Pretty Picture
My cousin told me about an upcoming horror movie by the name of "The Hills Have Eyes". I Googled it and discovered that it's a remake of the 1977 movie by the same name and the same producer, i.e. Wes Craven.
I'm looking forward to watching it when it releases on March 10, insha Allah. Although Wes Craven's known for making gory horror movies (Nightmares on Elm Street), his movies are still more tasteful and contain more of a plot than more recent film-makers' projects.
While reading the review of the remake I came across a phrase that proves to be extremely graphic.
The MPAA rating reads, "R for strong gruesome violence and terror throughout, and for language."
Terror throughout. Makes me think of people fainting in theaters from lack of oxygen since they had been screaming throughout, out of terror throughout.
A Feeble Attempt
SubhanAllah, the sky looks beautiful tonight. There is a full moon and it is completely surrounded by small fluffs of clouds that seem to have been a single body once, and like the surface of a marble cake-mix, sifted into smaller bits with a toothpick.
I took my camera and snapped lots of pictures, thinking the entire time of the day I spent with Afshan in New York City and that day the sky looked painted on. Truly, painted on with a fine brush. I could not shift my eyes from the end of the street at each avenue that showed a glimpse as if it were a view-finder that bore witness to a true work of art.
My favorite flower is the narcissus (nargis) and alhamdo lillah I was surrounded by them in my recent trip to Islamabad. Zairah told me to take pictures of them so she knew which flower I meant when I described them to her.
I took countless pictures and realized that not one could describe exactly the awe I felt on seeing them, nor capture its fragrance for me to bring home.
There is a limit to emotions captured in photography. Not even the greatest camera or photographer can replicate the majesty of Allah's creations in nature, or the awe that it evokes in His people.
Bon appetit!
There's something extremely disconcerting about having to hear the cook sneeze himself inside-out in the kitchen while preparing the next meal to be consumed by us.
To Thine Own Self Be True
Kundera's thoughts on betrayal, an act that could be committed to a person, an idea, a commitment or a resolution, but all resulting in the gradual loss of self and all that is true ("haq" in Urdu sounds better):
"But if we betray B., for whom we betrayed A., it does not necessarily follow that we have placated A. ... The first betrayal is irreparable. It calls forth a chain reaction of further betrayals, each of which takes us farther and farther away from the point of our original betrayal."
On Parades
"... behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a basic pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison."
Quote taken from "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" a novel by Milan Kundera
Night Light
Can reading books truly be divided into daytime and night-time books?
Meaning, are there any books that I would rather stay up the entire night to read than take out time during the day for?
I think I would. Because this thought crossed my mind while reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" at two am: a book I have been unable to read during the day for lack of proper attention.
It's alhamdo lillah such a good feeling to have the quiet time to sit back and think over Kundera's ways of expressing common terms like parades, death, rebellion and sorts and give them the amount of reflection they deserve.
I doubt I would have pondered as much over this had it not been for the fact that I had been unable to finish this book for months when all it required was a night of my time.