Lo and behold! The latest (at the time of this writing) keyword analysis for this ulta seedha corner of the big bad Web (I filtered keywords not related to Eid) :

And here are my two paisas:

• bakra: I can totally understand why this is the most frequent keyword. Here’s what I would try to say, though: while bakras are the most popular animal of choice for most people, this Eid is called بَقَرہ عید, and not بکرا عید. I hope I’ve made my point.
• bakra pic(s), bakra photo(s), bakra picture(s), bakra images, image for bakra: Here you go. They are great, aren’t they?
• most beautiful bakra pic: See the post title. Good luck.
• cuet bakray pic: See the post title. Wait, I have got one!
• bakra poetry: So sorry, buddy, I only know of one couplet (from Iqbal’s گائے اور بکری):
  

  ؎ یوں تو چھوٹی ہے ذات بکری کی
  دل کو لگتی ہے بات بکری کی

  And this one from Anwar Maqsood:

  ؎ دیکھ کے بکری کو اِک بکرے نے کہا اے جانِ عزیز
  اب کے ہم بچھڑے تو ممکن ہے کبابوں میں ملیں

• write eid mubarak in urdu and english: In Urdu: “عید مبارک”. In English: “Happy Eid”. Always glad to help.
• bakra eid funny sentence: I’ll leave this one for my readers.
• eid mubarak sentences: Well, uh, how about these: “May this Eid bring to you joy, prosperity, and bakras”, and (it’s cliched but always spot on) “لاڈو صابن بنانے والوں کی جانب سے اہلِ وطن کو دلی عید مبارک”.
• eid pictures for kids: Wait, what? There are separate Eid pictures for kids and adults? Should there be?
• 47 man bakra: I have no idea what this means.
• http://ultaseedha.com.pk/: I know, not related to Eid, but I felt like including it. It’s a good one, you know.
• eid bad jokes: This… doesn’t sound good.
• eid mubarak paragraph: Do your own homework!
• Bakra Eid Cows: Read the first bullet; it’s Baqarah Eid.
• eid ul adha cute comic: This keyword came from *dramatic pause* Australia! Dude, whoever you are, I genuinely hope you weren’t disappointed.

Eid Mubarak, everyone! Enjoy the spirit of sacrifice and the tikkas.

A few days ago, Shahzeb shared a link on Facebook about “Foxy Shahzadi”, a 1974 Beetle, which has been decorated with truck-art and is currently being driven from Islamabad to Paris by a French Dr. Vincent Loos. Dr. Loos wishes to portray a better image of Pakistan, and believes that Pakistan is not all about terrorism. I, with many others, agree.

Here is the Beetle’s story on The Guardian, and here is the earlier coverage by Dawn. And if you would like to follow the Foxy Shahzadi’s journey (named “Art on Wheels tour”), here is its blog. (The above photograph was taken by Dawn’s Tanveer Shahzad.)

By the way, Shahzeb, get back to blogging, will ya?

25 random things about me

In other news, I have been tagged by Falsa to write down 25 random things about me.

I have done similar tags in the past, so this time I am going to repeat some of them. Here goes.

1. I get thirsty after brushing my teeth.
2. My favourite season is autumn.
3. I had my first computer when I was in the 8th grade (about 13 years ago). Abbu ji had bought it for us siblings so that we could “learn computing”. It used to run Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and also had a fax modem with a bitrate of 14.4 kbit/s. I never used that modem. (Yeah, I missed out.)
4. My first gaming console was Atari 2600 Jr., and my favourite game back then was Moon Patrol. (I now wish, though, that I had played this version, instead of this.)
5. I can roll my tongue.
6. While writing with a pen, I don’t like to place its cap on its butt. I either keep the cap in my other hand, or put it somewhere nearby.
7. Responsibilities scare me.
8. I have labelled each step of the staircase in my home as either a “right-foot-step” or a “left-foot step” (in my mind, of course), and I rarely put my left foot on a right-foot-step, and vice versa.
9. I read Slashdot.
10. I used to play a lot with dinky cars in my childhood.
11. I feel uncomfortable to sleep in pitch black darkness.
12. I am a morning bird.
13. I love typography. Sadly, I am not as good at it as I would like to be.
14. I like collecting title soundtracks of all those TV shows that NTM used to syndicate.
15. I have never worn a sherwani. (When I previously mentioned it, No One told me not to worry and assured me that “[my] time will come”.)
16. I like running. I used to run even on extremely cold mornings in good old days. I hope I’ll be able to resume it.
17. I have been wearing spectacles since I was 11 years old.
18. I was once addicted to Tetris.
19. My first email address was on Hotmail. I soon switched to Net@ddress and kept using it until they cancelled their free subscriptions.
20. I love reading dedications, prefaces, and acknowledgments in books.
21. When I was a child, I used to have a fear of sitting in a movie theater. My parents tell me that I had developed this phobia after watching King Kong in the cinema. (They don’t remember which King Kong movie it was.)
22. I am a fan of Tintin.
23. I had once written a detective novel that was so pathetic that I never showed it to anyone except my siblings.
24. I have been using the same mobile phone for the last 4 years. No, I don’t have any emotional affiliation with it.
25. I like fog.

From Google with Love

Like everybody else from Blogistan, I have also had my share of amusing keywords and phrases that people enter in Google and then land on my blog. Here are the highlights from the past 7 days:

• pics of beautiful cows in mandi
• very beautifull qurbani bakra
• adult imran series
• its boring time now what should i do pakistan
• studies on time wasters
• What to say at an awards ceremony
• ESSAY ON LOVEMY CONTORY IN URDU
• need shehzore on rent
• what is meant by name aabi
• nd when u find yourself lying helpless in her arms u knoww u really loved a woman

As I said in an old post, keep searching.

9. Why does the song, which took almost 45 minutes to download on your dial-up internet connection, turn out to have a quality inferior than your 15 years old tape recorder?

8. Why does the ice-cream/juice/salan/fit-any-sort-of-food-here has to fall on your white shirt?

7. Why is it so difficult to realize that the professor is talking about cache performance when he says, “If I have 5 misses, what is the penalty of each miss?”

6. Should I be worried that googling “nadia khan birthday special” directs people to this blog?

5. Should I be flattered that “top ten handsome of the world” is doing the same?

4. Why does an Apple MacBook Pro cost a hefty USD$1,999?

3. Am I the only one who thinks that telephone lines/mobile phone networks should provide the facility of electrocuting those callers who after hearing a “hello” respond with a “Who are you?”?

2. Why is the Earth round and not flat (so that we could push so many people off its edge)?

1. Does any of our so-called leaders give a damn?

I admit, I am a fan of Junaid Jamshed. I also admit that I would love to have his cellphone number. Some years earlier, I would have used his cellphone number to tell him how great, or disappointing, one of his songs had turned out for me, but now that he sports a beard and spends his time reading religious books, I might want to have his personal opinion on some matter. Or maybe, I could suggest my own ulta seedha concept for his kurta designs. But seriously, does anyone really believe that I would be advertising his, or for that matter, any celebrity’s cellphone number here on my blog?

Search engines are such an interesting kind of computer programs. And as with all computer programs that exist, they have their limitations. I don’t remember where, but I was reading somewhere that if one searches for “car”, and then performs another search for “automobile”, should it make any difference? If you are a human, there is no, or very little, difference. If, however, you are a search engine, it makes all the difference in the world.

Anyway, my intention right now was not to write about search engines and how they work. Instead, I would like to share some of the keywords which are directing traffic to this ulta seedha corner.

Topping the list is “Maulana Tariq Jamil”. And before you jump to any conclusion, I have never ever met the Maulana. People might have been looking for any of his lectures online or something like that, but the thing I wonder about is that why someone looking for lectures of Maulana Tariq Jamil would click on a search result which is titled “Ulta Seedha”. And I just can’t imagine their disappointment (or fury) when after clicking on that result they read the description of my encounter with a speed driving, traffic cutting taxi driver.

Another recurring keyword is “Imran Series“. People have been trying to read it online (“on line read imran series novels”) and by some stroke of very unfortunate luck, they are being ushered to this blog. I actually am a HUGE fan of Imran Series (if, of course, written by Ibne Safi, and not by any of his copiers, though I’ll admit that I was introduced to this series by Mazhar Kaleem. Fortunately, after reading the original, I vowed never again to touch the Imran Series’ novels by Mazhar Kaleem or any other author). To my disappointment, though, one of the searches was “imran series mazhar kaleem”.

An expectable keyword is, of course, “ulta seedha” (with or without the space). They might have been searching for the show which goes on air (on Geo TV, I guess) with the same name (“download ulta seedha”), but let me now clear this: That show did not inspire the name of this blog. Heck, I don’t even watch TV and came to know about the show by a friend. But anyway, as a proof, this blog was started before the show started. There!

The winner among the keywords (or I should say keyphrases), though, is a result of the greatest disease on this planet: boredom. Somewhere on earth, a person sat in front of a computer, connected it to the Internet, and then googled this: “feeling bored want something interesting”. Tragedy, I tell you. Even more tragic is that person’s fate of clicking on the 4th search result, and then torturing himself/herself to read my ramblings about the first day of the 5th Semester, when actually all s/he asked for was “something interesting”. Whoever that person is, I really feel sorry for him/her. I really do.

Some other worth mentioning keywords are:

• tariq bin ziad spain
• guess papers of 10th class (I don’t know how that student would find them here)
• rent a car in pakistan
• funny sms
• dhuwan
• mortein mats (Bhaijan, you were right: Include a macchar in anything, and it clicks!)

And now that I have included so many search keywords in this post, I wonder how many hits it is going to get.