Older blog entries for zeenix (starting at number 73)

Jan (aka thaytan) was in Helsinki for a few hours with his fiance because of their connected flight to Australia this evening. After the office, I went straight to the National Museum to meet them. They seem to be perfect couple and it was fun meeting them. Since pizza is the only thing (and the first thing) i talked about in my blogs, it seems readers of my blog (at least the fluendians) think that pizza is the only thing i eat. :) We went to a Chinese sort of restaurant and I ordered something with bhindi (which Europeans know by the name 'Okra'). It turned out that it didn't really have much bhindi in it. I attempted to use the chopsticks for the first time in my life. Although I tried my best to mimic Jan but I wasn't very successful. Although, I did manage to finish all the rice with it, at last.

Porting the flx/fli plugin

Since Monday, I started the attempt to port the flx/fli plugin to 0.9 branch. It turned out that the process isn't as easy as I thought of it. Not only because there are many changes from the point of view of the plugin writer but also is the fact that I haven't been doing any gstreamer coding for a while. Anyway, I still hope to complete it before the start of the next week.

Christian's dream

I always thought it's just a dream of Christian that I'll become a bourgeois-man after moving to Finland. But yesterday i was shocked when I was able to give useful/practical tips to a friend Asif (a friend of mine in pk) on how to make money out of open-source development.

Christian and Wim were on a short visit to Helsinki this week. It was very nice to finally meet these two friends I had only known through the Internet. I am very happy to know (through Christian's blog) that he enjoyed his meetings with me. He is also wondering if he and Wim didn't bore me. Christian! You didn't bore me at all as, #1 I thought of you as quite more boring then you actually are :P #2 When I am with someone, I am so much concerned about the other person getting bored, that i don't get the time to get bored myself. The only boring part was of you going to bed very early. :)

Regarding Wim, he couldn't possibly be boring. Wim has a very 'sexy' accent and I am quite sure that ladies really enjoy talking to him. I wish i could mimic his accent. Moreover, he kept on praising me which can't be boring for anyone. :)

When i told Christian about my hatred of dogs, he quickly concluded my hatred of General Musharaf is the result of that. I am not sure how serious he was but he still continues to claim that Musharaf is a very liberal and nice person. Oh well! No one is perfect.

Future of GNU Robots

Ever since the first day i started to hack on GNU Robots, I thought that it's a very nice candidate for Gnome Games but Christian told me that that might not be possible since it's not simple at all. These lines from the official page of Gnome Games testifies that Christian is very right about that: "Gnome Games is a very large package and there is neither the room for new games or the time to maintain them."

Weekend:

Went to a watch a movie in a theater (for the first time in Finland) with Anna. It turned out that she didn't like sci-fi at all so i watched 'The Crash' with her. It was a nice movie but too realistic for me to enjoy. BTW, don't get any wrong ideas, she is 'just a friend'.

Following is a blog i wrote a few months ago but didn't post it for security reasons ;) Now that i am far from Pakistani Army and ISI, i feel safe to post this. But if anything happens to me, you know who did it :). Here it goes:

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Pakistani army is 'the' terrorist organization

Imagine Stalin or Saddam, and then look at Musharaf. Find a lot of similarities? Most probably not and you'll be thinking of me as as complete idiot for thinking about such a comparison. Well my dear friends (especially the ones in the west), please wake-up. Your thoughts about our rulers are very important. The difference between Saddam and Musharaf is that of strategy. Saddam thought of himself as very strong and his country as unconquerable but Musharaf is a very intelligent man and he knows that he must keep the west happy if he wants to remain in power.

How he achieves that? Very simple, he keeps the west under an illusion that if he is not there and he lets people decide their fate, the country will then be ruled by people not very different from the Taliban.

Where is the proof? Don't panic! I have one (at least): Very recently there were some protests by the human/women rights activists in Pakistan in favor of women marathon. The main participant was none other than the famous Asma Jahangir. The protesters were attacked and were being treated very brutally. Who were the attackers? Not any extremist Muslims but the police. One police-woman tore the clothes off Asma Jahangir. That police-woman later confessed that she was ordered to do so by higher-authorities. Asma told in a recent interview that when she was threatened continuously by some religious extremist party on the phone, she finally decided to track the caller. Do you know what she found out? The number of the caller was not of some religious party but that of some military head-quarters.

My dear western friends! I am not asking you to do anything for me or my society but please don't be fooled by a dictator. He is nothing more than a dictator. Religion and religious extremism is needed by the army and the army will at no cost want to actually eliminate it.

Something amazing has happened, i can now eat the complete pizza of the normal size, which is a little smaller than the one tommi can eat. Hopefully, I'll soon be able to eat as much as tommi can. :) It might be because my stomach has finally recognized the pizza as a valid meal.

Yesterday, i spent the whole day trying to fulfill some government paperwork. Unfortunately, only one of the task was accomplished as the offices close at 4 and 4:30. I was so lost. People are so helping that they would sometimes give you directions even if they themselves don't know where they are :) At one point, i was moving around a big building trying to find the subway station. After a few rounds, i asked myself (intuition) rather than someone else where it could be and believe me or not, it turned out to be exactly where i thought it should be.

Somehow, i forgot to mention about the endless help of Toni Willberg in my last blog. He helped me a lot in the shopping and stuff. He also gave away one of his mattress to me, which is the only thing i have to sleep on. :) Moreover, he is also ready to give away a nice table but that doesn't unfortunately fits in his car. :( Thanks a lot Toni and I am extremely sorry for not giving you your due credits in my last blog.

Day 1 (Mon, Aug 08)

Due to my flight from Dubai to Frankfort getting late, i missed my original flight to Helsinki. Since it was my first time ever abroad, I was very nervous about the whole situation but I felt ok when i got me aboard the next flight. I landed at Helsinki airport at 2 pm. Got myself a taxi and went straight to the office, as Tommi was waiting there. I was told by a number of people that i wont get any language problems since i am good at English but no one ever told me about the strong accent that Finns have. The first thing i did was to go to the bank and make myself a bank account. I spent the whole day with Tommi. We went to some place for some pizza and i was not just astonished to see the size of the pizza but seeing the skinny tommi eating it all within a few minutes (if not seconds).

Day 2 (Tue, Aug 09)

Had too much stuff to do, spent most of the day hunting for apartments. In the evening we went to the small forrest/hill just outside tommi's apartment, from there we went to another hill a bit far away. Fate wasn't on our side and it started to rain. We got quite late on our way back and could only find one place open. From there, i bought a small burger that was not enough for my appetite, so i ate some of the pizza from the last day. That pizza even survived one more day as i was having it for my breakfast as well. Tommi was really surprised at that. On our way back, we met a friend/neighbor of Tommi, who talked as much as woman do talk. I was surprised at that since tommi told me that Finns don't talk much. Upon asking him, he said: "Well, she was a girl". :)

Day 3 (Wed, Aug 10)

Went to see some apartments we found a day ago. All of them were good enough for me but only one in the Lauttasaari was very near to the office. We showed interest in it and that guy managing the deals, told me that i have a bright chance of getting it. At night, tommi got his big screen which he was waiting for. We watched 'The Village' on it and it was fun. I don't know if it was the effect of the big screen or the movie was really good.

Day 4 (Thu, Aug 11)

I finally got the apartment in Lauttasaari. Here are some nice pictures of the area:

http://www.fma.fi/virtualboat/suomenlahti/05/lauttasaari.JPG http://www.kaupunginosat.net/kotikatu/galleriafi/lauttasaari.jpg

I moved into it as soon as i got it. Although I am yet to make a contract with the power department, they haven't cut the power yet. I also bought myself a cable Internet connection and they said that it would be functional as soon as i reach my apartment. Unfortunately, i forgot my laptop at tommi's, so i had to just go to bed. :)

Day 5 (Fri, Aug 12)

Now that i had my own address in Helsinki, i was eligible to apply for a social security ID. Tommi handed me a map and said that it's better i go there on foot. Although i forgot the name of the department/building, i still reached there safely. It was good to see that almost anyone i asked for directions, was willing to help me and was speaking English. The lady at the foreign registration office told me that I'll be getting my ID mailed to me the next week. In the evening, we had a party at the office, which was quite fun. I had to leave the office to buy some important stuff for my apartment. When i was back at office, some colleagues were going to a bar, so i joined them. That was fun too. Now that i had my laptop, the cable modem wasn't able to register itself, so i just went to sleep.

Day 6 (Sat, Aug 12)

I had 'more than' enough to drink the last night, i was feeling very bad. I think my stomach wasn't able to digest the beers. I called the Internet service providers and they promised to fix the problem for me. I went outside, found a Chinese restaurant and had my lunch there (at 5 pm). When i come back home, I was happy to see my Internet starting to work. So i wasted quite the rest of the day looking for some nice stuff to watch on my fast connection. But the only thing that worked for me was the Owen Taylor's Cairo presentation video from GUADEC.

Observations so far:

• Finns have a big appetite.
• They are very helping people.
• They try their best to speak English with foreigners, some survive this effort and some fail quite miserably.
• They don't seem to be in any way like the cunning, negative-minded, jealous and fanatically religious people that i have lived with so far.

They say 'a picture is worth a thousand words' so here are my first thousand words. The next phase of thousand words in on it's way. Too busy right now!

OK, so i finally made it and i am writing this blog just to inform all concerned people. Very busy, totally clueless and looking for an apartment. I might be able to get one tomorrow but can't say anything for sure. Right now i am staying with Tommi Leino (my project manager), but i have no idea how long can he bear me. Too tired to write more so i should just sleep. :)

Got the visa and also the ticket confirmed for tomorrow night. Now if something bad doesn't happen, I'll be landing on the Helsinki airport on Monday morning.

The Protector:

No, I am not talking about any new action movie, but rather a person/department in Pakistan that is responsible to 'protect' Pakistani workers in any foreign country. I've been doing different sorts of jobs at very different places in Pakistan for the past 3/4 years but there haven't been any kind of support from the Government at all. I am very thankful to my relative (who is a traveling agent) who warned me that i might need the signature/stamp of the 'Protector' on my passport before i leave and he was quite correct about it. I spent the past two days trying to get that stamp and I did get it but please don't ask me about the details. Seems I was a bit luckier than this poor chap.

I take my words back about the Finns. They are good at fulfilling their promises (at least): They did decided on my case yesterday and I'll be getting my passport tomorrow or the day after. The traveling agent told me that i might need a transit visa for UK, depending on what kind of visa i am given but I (and Uraeus) are quite sure that that shouldn't be the case if I won't get out of the airport. This page seems to suggest that we are wrong: http://www.german-embassy.org.uk/airport_transit_visa.html . Anyway if everything goes smooth, I'll be lending at Helsinki airport next week.

Battle City:

Will Webekind emailed me today a link to the Battle City ROM but seems it won't run in my favorite super-nintendo emulator (snes9x) since the ROM is of NES not SNES. I (apt-cache) searched for a NES emulator, found fceu, installed and it worked but couldn't find the keys for fire. The manpage seems to be lieing about the default key bindings.