... ... ... ...

Woke up this morning missing all my smiles
Been sleep-walking for miles and miles and miles
My dreams are apprehensive; they’ve a fish-eyed view
By the way I just tried to say that I need you

—Abd elAzeez
[Current state of mind: Perplexingly Optioned]

A sad state of affairs

Condemnation
Eradication
Condensation
Here lies their son

Reparation
Compensation
Cost-infliction
Not all in fun

Syndication
Congregation
Convocation
A dying nation

Hesitation
Consultation
Aspiration
No Ambitions

Here lies their son
Not all in fun
A dying nation
With no ambitions

Reminisce the passed times
Churning out these fast rhymes
Because your motherland dies
Amidst destruction, rubble and lies

Deaths, suffering, anguish and pain
Streets wetted with the crimson rain
Terror, wounds, and flowing eyes
The body rots away, the soul still cries

—Abd elAzeez
[Current thought: It could have been anybody... Damn!]

...a test of friendship

How often do we feel good when our close friends they do
And how oft are we sad when they're feelin low too?
For although the former may seem like an easy thing to do,
The latter is but the actual test of true companionship for you!

—Abd elAzeez
[Current state of mind: Apprehensive Exhilaration]

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Following this post I've decided to record my current state of mind in each post. That, I believe, will give bring some more insight for ya'll into the twisted workings of my grey matter as well as provide me with some record-keeping for future reference (just in case this place becomes too darned famous and some big business tycoon proposes buying it out from me... in millions :-)

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...worth dying for!

Why do we have to die?
Life kills you in the end doesn't it?
Life is about being alive...I wish it would last forever!
...and many such clichéd statements prove to be an indispensable part of our conversations everyday, and we humans keep fooling ourselves into believing that probably some miraculous discovery of science(?) would save us from dying! ...something which our fore-fathers and their fore-fathers and their fore-fathers in turn, pursued just as much, but (as is evident :-) never attained.

Someone asked me what I thought about the whole hullabaloo, and I replied (with analogies as always):
---When you go to sleep at night (into the elusive dreamy-world) do you wish for eternal sleep and never to wake up again to the reality anymore?
---Do you appear for an exam hoping it would last forever without any results?
---Would you ever –on arriving at the start of a bridge– think to yourself, "I want to keep walking on this bridge forever and never ever reach the other side, because this bridge looks so damn pretty to me"?

NO you and I don't say all that! We realize all that goes up has to come down and everything that starts has to end. Then whydo we trick ourselves when it comes to Life?

The truth is, this life's just a test to see if you're fit-enough to 'fit in' to a good place.
Do well in this and you'll be given stuff that's 'worth dying for' ...in the literal sense of that term!

—Abd elAzeez

The Lonely Fish

There are certain times in life when you don't need to be alone to feel lonely.

[CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL 2-Mega-pixel SIZE]

With almost a quarter of a century's experience of being alive, I'll tell you what I've learn't about situations like these. The trick in those times is to keep doing your thing as you always did AND never lose hope even in the least bit... eventually things will fall into place... well atleast they'll all fall into that place where they are 'supposed to be' according to HIS will, and THAT my friend, is what's the best for you and the best for everything else.

—Abd elAzeez

Picture Titled: The Lonely Fish – Oil on Canvas effect

...accept the whole package.

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[CLICK TO SEE FULL 2-megapixel SIZE]

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Here’s one of my favorite quotes on love.
This one was pinned onto a colleague’s desk and never failed to amuse each time I visited him.

A little history to introduce this picture:- It seems this colleague had 'inherited' the picture from another dude who’d left the company a few weeks ago, who himself had inherited it from another person who in-turn had been shifted to a different location in the building. All this, within a span of 6 months; and the pic’s seen em all come and go at the same desk. Besides no one ever wanted to take the picture down from right infront of them.

Now having a camera equipped phone can be a very handy thing when you’re ‘out there in the wild’ as I like to call this world (yes everything is ‘out there’ for me because I believe we are all just travelers out here on our way to a better place.. and that could very well be a topic for a new blog post). So as I was saying, having a good camera-phone at hand is immensely amusing, and if that camera is our very own super w750i with modified cam drivers to get that awesome macro-mode pic, what can one do except keep clicking everywhere :-)

This pic never fails to inspire whenever I’m down in the dumps or feeling low about something in life, simply because in the end most things that we ever feel sad are about those which we love aren't they?

—Abd elAzeez

Break the Language Barrier

Abd's Takes

You know you're writing a popular blog when...

...the only comment you get on your blog in quite a long time (apart from the numerous personal emails and telephone calls from your own close buddies praising your writings) is from some random dude who you haven't met yet... one who's into selling funnily customized t-shirts... on some fanciful Portuguese website.

Now that's called 'reaching out to an international audience'. :D

P.S. The uninitiated may check out the (sentimental?) post below this one
P.S.2. While the others may comment on this one :-)

—Abd elAzeez
Amigo aqui vindo

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The copyrighted [mini?] series titled Abd's takes, is a collection of humorous blog posts comprising of completely original but wierd/ obnoxious/ unfathomable/ and seldom-light-hearted tid-bits of humor that are a product of my own twisted mind.

Feel free to use them where-ever you want to, just don't forget to 'quote the author' (in simpler terms, mention me!)If you don't, then bad things might happen to you; things like forgetting the punch-line when in the middle of an elaborately told joke, or meeting an audience-member who knows the answers to all of your original 'amusing-riddles'.

:-)

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A little more time for me please…

Oh well it’s been but a long boring day
Weather’s cold and the sky’s been gray
The workplace’s dreary and my eye's getting weary
Couldn’t I’d be anywhere except in this friggin’ chair?

Yet I’m happy and content in a tranquil way
Not feeling as lifeless and dull on this protracted day
Grateful at being alive just to pull through it
For surely THAT gives me some more time to prepare for the grave

—Abd elAzeez

In Disparation...

Aloha people, today I'll post a couple of pictures taken with different camera settings and lighting conditions. The differences in the output I believe, are very profound.

To begin with, the flower in the first picture was subjected to the LED Flash light from my W750i, thus causing a yellow-ish green tinge to the picture, as also some shadows behind it. The ISO setting on the camera was at ISO 100 which meant that the time the photo-sensor would take to capture an exposure was quite less (in lay man's terms), thus leading to an under-exposed picture with the given lighting conditions. The white-balance setting was at 'Daylight' for this one, causing a mellowed overtone.

The second picture however, used only the lighting from a tube-light right above the subject (yes, it pays to turn off your own light source i.e. the flash at times), and a slightly higher ISO value of 125 (a subtle looking deviation, but very powerful in the given situation) which caused better exposure than the one on the left. This one however was shot in 'Flourescent' setting of the white-balance.

Note that there was no digital editing on any of these pictures.

Click on images for full (2 mega-pixel) size.

—Abd elAzeez

Both pictures taken with my modified w750i [i.e. K750i flashed with W800i firmware] Sony Ericsson cell phone camera .

To companionship!

With the advent of the internet, we've got more days to celebrate than a year could hold even if it leaps twice each time it comes around. Why we've even got weird sounding days like got 'Drop Some Ice-cream on your Partner Day', and 'Give your Cat a Love-Pill day' and 'Smile at Really Stange-looking Strangers Day' and what nots.... the list is endless so to speak. But well, whether you believe in these days or not, you gotta believe that someone somewhere could be observing them.

That said, perhaps the most celebrated and to-be-remembered-or-else-you're-out kind of days (except your Anniversaries and your spouse's Birthday of course...you'll be kicked out even before you can think of forgetting those, if you know what I'm hinting at :-) is Friendship's Day. A day even well known by words like 'Friendship Day' and 'Best Friends' Day', (even weird ones like 'Love-ship Day'...yes, there are people who've coined that term too...at the spur of the moment probably... Fathom over-hearing this in a local coffee shop "Susan, I don't want to have Love-ship with you yet, I am asking only for your hand..in Friendship..." Damn you dude, what on earth is Loveship? and what in love's name do you ask for in that, a toe from Susan's left foot?]. There's so much hype around this Friendship day (well-deserved of-course), that people have even begun celebrating Friendship Week...that is a week before Friendship's day actually is... AND in fact now it is so much, that we even celebrate Friendship Week after Friendship's Day. But the fact remains, the day does deserve its moments. [Every single one of the 24x12x60 of them]

Absurd humor (a trademark of this blog?) apart, just around the corner is one of those days when people love to tell their best buddies that its been wonderful knowing them and having them around when they were needed the most.

And yes, with the buzz around friendship these days (no puns intended), we thought we'd post out here today, a (very small part of the) collection of some of the best friendship quotes that we've selected from (the plethora of quotes that comprise) the internet.

So here goes... This post is dedicated to the best of my friends, the ones who've stuck with me through thick and thin, through the times of despair as well as the shadows of joy, believing in me and supporting me on every other step ever since they were revealed to me by destiny... You people have made a difference in my life and I simply love each one of you for being there with me. These are some of my dedications for you

—Abd elAzeez
P.S. Please click on images for bigger size

At work!

If the comedy of errors of sharing a common extension at work didn't provide enough material to blog for, it seems that our hero's Clark Kent-ish alter-ego has something else to brag about.

There's been a spate of unusual visitors at his desk in recent times, and he doesn't seem to waste even a micro-second in pulling out his famed mobile phone cam (Sony Ericsson W750i now with updated cameradriver 1.3beta9 by SPU) and taking that one precarious shot at them before they escape into the eternal oblivion from whence they all seemed to have come from (that is, assuming his boss isn't around right then :)...

OK. OK. Ridiculously framed sentences apart, here we've posted two little visitors from tiny-land that Abd's captured in his cell phone. The 8-legged wonder at the top is called 'Arachnid at Work', while the reptile down below is named 'Thin Lizzy' after the Metallica cover of the track called Cowboy by the band Thin Lizzy (anybody got brighter ideas for a name?)

P.S. Don't mind the image quality please, there's just this much time to pull out the cam, frame the subject, reduce the shutter speed, (possibly) change the ISO level from 100 upwards for that perfect exposure, focus the lens and then shoot... in MACRO-MODE!

P.S.2. Clicking on the pictures will open them up in full (2 mega-pixel) resolution.