MyLifeDump

After being accused of terrorist activities, Hasan Elahi decided to create a website documenting his daily activities. He was recently interviewed on the popular comedy central show The Colbert Report. He is Bangladeshi with Blonde Hair and teaches at San Jose State University.

According to the IRS website, stimulus payments were suppose to go out starting May 2nd for people who will be receiving direct deposit. According to the schedule, I was suppose to get the payment on May 2nd as I paid my taxes using direct withdrawal and so on May 2nd I was expecting a deposit…. well it is May 16th today and still no deposit.

The payment schedule says that for people whose last 2 digits of SSN are between 00 and 20, they should see a direct deposit on May 2nd. I fall in that category but it’s been more than 2 weeks since May 2nd.

I am sure that I am not the only one who hasn’t received direct deposit and wanted to know if anyone else reading this blog is in my boat. Are you?

I reviewed this show last week and now I have couple of videos to share with you. I mentioned in my review that all the acts like the song/ghazal performances, Qawwali, and Khabarnama were very nicely done. Well… here I have two videos; one is of the Qawwali and the other is of a funny comedy show titled “Mujh sey shadi karo gi?” Performances in both these shows were excellent and entertaining. Take a look:

Qawwali

Mujh Se Shadi Karo Gi

I went to see “An Afternoon Dedicated to Urdu” show at UC Berkeley which was last weekend on May 3rd, 2008. This show was presented by Pakistani Students Association at UC Berkeley.

The show had quite a lineup of acts including, but not limited to, a live song/ghazal performance, a Qawwali, Saturday Night Live type news segment named “Khabarnama” and Antakshri. Apart from that, UC Berkeley Urdu Professor Aftab Ahmed, Chariman of Urdu Society Tashie Zaheer and representative from yourDIL.org were some of the guest speakers.

I hope you liked what I said above because you might not like what I am going to say now. The show was in a very small classroom in Dwinelle building on the gigantic UC Berkeley campus where there are humongous lecture halls. Apparently the organizers thought that no one will show up, talk about high expectations. I would rather see few empty chairs than see no chairs at all and people being crammed.

The hall wasn’t decorated with a single piece of paper that had the name of the show on it. I mean seriously, when you organize a show, you try to at least create a banner that has the name of the show maybe outside the hall or for that matter, inside the hall.

The point where I completely lost it was when I saw the worst Urdu speakers hosting the show. If you cannot speak Urdu, why exactly are you hosting an Urdu show? Every time the hosts showed up to announce acts, I had to cross my fingers because people around me where making fun of each and every word that was pronounced with a WHITE Urdu accent or Butchered.

It was very much evident that the organizers had messed up big time, especially when you see a person on the damn stage sitting on a table with two laptops trying to change PowerPoint slides.

That said, all the acts like the song/ghazal performances, Qawwali, and Khabarnama were very nicely done and it looked like the performers treated the show with more respect than the organizers who were involved with micro managing.

I enjoyed the music videos also as they were better than the ones that were produced last year. I did keep in my mind that each one of the performer, on and off the stage, is basically an amateur and one can only do as much as one is capable of. All the performers did a wonderful job and tried to do their best and I applaud them for this.

I, like everyone else, tend to remember the bad rather than good and I just can’t ignore the organizers who treated this show with utmost disrespect, especially when they dumped Urdu in the middle of the show and decided to announce acts in English, that honestly is a disgrace.

From the beginning days of this show, my wife was involved with the whole project and from what I heard, they were not really prepared. All the organizers wanted was to pull off a show, they were not concerned or cared about why and how? This show had a reason, at least for me, I wanted to hear what good is in Urdu language, I wanted to see it promoted… that was not what organizers thought about the show because they had lowered their expectations to such a low standard that few 5th graders who sing national anthem would look better in front of them.

There is hope though; I heard that this show was better than what they had last year. That is a good sign. It is getting better every year and next year hopefully it will be better than this year. On a very good note, the show was able to generate $950 in cash for the non-profit organization yourDIL that promotes literacy in Pakistan.

One day after it opened, I went to see Harold and Kumar 2 - Escape from Guantanamo. The sequel, like the first one was extremely hilarious with lot of funny jokes with racial tones and lot of stereotype bashing.

After the first movie, it was hard to imagine that the producers would not make the sequel. The movie begged a sequel and it was better than the first one I think.

My favorite part in the movie is the scene in the end with President Bush. The guy acting as BUSH is awesome with his lines, accent, wardrobe and overall performance. Harold and Kumar 2 is a must see for anyone who likes movies that make you forget all your troubles and take you to a completely different world where you just laugh and laugh…