Completed

Our shed, that is. I say shed, but I think I'm gonna call it our poolhouse instead. The builders are not coming back and hopefully things will get back to how they were again.

The poolhouse itself is pretty impressive (it has a pitched roof!), and even I'm joining visitors in wondering what we'll do with such a big building at the bottom of our garden. Still, my parents have a knack of getting these things right so I'm sure it'll go to good use.

I'll prolly put piccies on my flickr eventually, so keep an eye out for those.

Film: Charlie And The Chocolate Factory

This film managed to get off to a great start, making me wonder why those of my friends who had seen already though this film wasn't that good. I soon found for myself why.

I'm not too sure what was missing, but something was. Noisy and confused Charlie even managed to give me a headache by the end of it. Depp was ok, as was the rest of the cast, but I suspect the biggest problem with the film was the, quite frankly, awful screenplay; anything that could be changed was.

Not totally bad, but disappointing all the same, I'm not sure I could recommend this flick. Read the book instead.

Plan Of Action

I think I need a fling or two before I go back home to get married; y'know for the sake of any future marriage I may have (see here).

I'm thinking a nice wholesome Hindu or Sikh girl (without being racist white girls are so last decade and I feel that as an Asian I should stick to and promote our own fantastic girls). Someone with standards, who doesn't just date anyone and even possibly someone who is also looking for a fling before their own arranged marriage.

Of course I should be careful to find someone who's NOT willing to convert, otherwise I might find myself in the sticky situation of actually having to marry them. Oh, and I won't tell them how they're just acting as a facilitator, because, well, it won't be an important factor in our relationship.

So? What do you all think? Unusually proactive, I know, but it's a sound plan of action I think...

Cause, Effect and Retrospective Justification

Y'know, it makes me think when some people confidently exclaim how the suicide bombers' actions were in no way Islamic, that their reasoning being that the religion itself prohibits suicide. I mean I'm not into suicide myself and I do believe that under conventional circumstances (which may include that of a suicide bomber) that it's wrong, and that what the bombers did was really bad (but more 'cos of their effect on others rather on themselves), but still I've left some important qualifications there.

One friend even went on to say that they believed that these guys can't have declared the Shahadah when pressing the button (something that all Muslims are advised to do as close as possible to death) since they weren't really Muslim. It really is kinda like towing the party line.

The analogy I use (and I accept that analogies are generally useless as proof, but they do make good food for thought) is pork. Now pork is generally haram for a Muslim, but that the same Muslim be expected to eat it if it meant death otherwise, in which case I presume it becomes halal. If killing myself saved hundreds of other lives (and I'll leave the reader to construct that particular thought experiment), would it still be wrong for me to do so? If tomorrow Tony Blair decided to stop all support for Israel, I wonder how many Muslims would change their opinions of the suicide bombers? Of course that would never happen in the short term, but looking at history we see long term reactions like this all the time. Would it diminish the severity of the individual crimes triggering these changes?

I guess this post is really about perspective and how one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. But it's also about how a person's perspective, their sworn concrete opinion, changes over time depending on their position at that point.

I've picked Islam and suicide since they're currently topical but we can find plenty examples of this fluid and ever moving morality. The police just shot dead a random guy and have called it the result of a necessary protective measure. This "collateral damage" argument was used to excuse the deaths in the last couple of wars too. I suspect if you talk to extremists they'll have similar "greater good" arguments too. A cynic would suggest that we may as well kill ourselves before someone else does.

And it's not only killings that are being excused; civil and human rights are also being trampled on the macro level, and individually we always tend to think we are right and even worse assuming others are wrong. Maybe this is a good thing - I think it was Machiavelli that believed that the morality of a successful leader has to contradict that of those he leads. So when can we sure whether an objective action is right or wrong? The clue is in the question, folks. I'm beginning to wonder whether we ever really can.

Sky Gone!

After around fifteen years, Sky television has finally left the Shaikh residence. We were there since the analogue days, in the times of bashed cards and during the migration to Sky Digital.

I think it was The Simpsons that drove me to bug my dad to get it - back then I didn't really watch much telly but this particular show was the show that all the cool kids watched then. Don't have a cow, man.

Over the last fifteen years I've watched a lot of television. I think it all started with Beverly Hills 90210, moving on to Star Trek, then Friends, then Buffy and all the other popular US telly shows in between. In some ways television schedules gave some kind of structure to my day.

But now I find my interest in television (and thinking about my other childhood love, videogaming) dwindling, slowly being replaced by other activities (y'know, like going out and stuff). The few shows I do now watch I can source from elsewhere (like E4 on Freeview as well as cough splutter "friends"), and we get to save twenty quid or so per month to boot.

So anyway. Goodbye Sky. You've been my oldest friend, but alas now I must dump you. Sniff.

Shak Has Cool Friends Shock!

Over the past couple of months many of my friends who didn't know each other before have, for some reason or another, been introduced. Now, while I don't have a problem with that (in theory I could end up having to buy half as many wedding presents as I would need to otherwise) the one thing that's really annoying me is how some, with honest surprise, are telling me how great xxx is or how cool yyy is or how much of a laugh zzz is.

I mean, duh. You don't have to tell me this. I know it already, and it's the reason why they're my mates. In fact I'm kinda insulted that there's any surprise at all. Tsk.

(And yes, I realise that sometimes it's nice to state the obvious and that I should be flattered and know that I'm blessed. But still, if you want to compliment me just stick to my looks or something.)

Link Of The Day

iPod Spamming

Urban dictionary once again proves that it's not just somewhere to go for definitions for obscure slang that some use, but also some kind of social commentary of western life. I've always argued against the practicality of carrying around four gazillion gigs of music* and noted that you often see people skipping tracks on their iPods rather than actually listening to them, but hey, whatever makes people tick...

*Estimated

New Music

Ass Like That - Eminem

One of the few artists I listen to the lyrics of (as opposed to just the music), Eminem again finds it a bit too easy to state the obvious. Pretty funny too - check out the video if you haven't already.

Rishta, Baby

So, it seems like the mother of a friend is trying to set me up. I don't know too many details (and it's probably unlikely that I would post any here), but I do know that she's female and stuff. I do feel like I might be forcing the issue and charging in, but then that's probably 'cos the whole thing has been swept under the carpet by my parents and me for so long.

As you all know this would be my first rishta thingy, but I'm not holding my breath since past experience dictates that something will probably stop it from moving forward. Hmm - I wonder if this girl likes cynics?

A question for the girlies - the rishta ALWAYS happens at the girl's house, right? It's like besti otherwise, innit?

How exciting.

Film: Fantastic Four

Great set pieces, crap story. I'm not an FF expert, but something seemed to be missing here. I suspect it was cosmetic, with the main cast not really settling into their roles.

It was better than Elektra and Daredevil though, so decide for yourself whether to watch or wait for the DVD.

Leicester In "Not That Bad" Shocker!

Ok, I'll admit that I didn't really get to see much of the city (it's a city??), but the little that I did was pretty cool. I guess the first thing that hit me was how similar to certain parts of London it was. Despite that it was different - wider, more open and even cleaner than in fact.

The wedding itself was pretty nice and housed in the apparently "posh" venue of the Walker Stadium. It was pleasant enough but let down by awful logistics (we didn't eat till 10:30pm!) which was especially annoying since we had a two hour drive home afterward. It was another HBZ affair and so the usual suspects were all present and it was nice having another of our yearly catch ups (having said that, I've taken numbers down to try and improve on this situation). Oh and I will especially note the "intelligence" yesterday too. Nobody told me that Leicester was so "intelligent". It was definitely more "intelligent" than some of the weddings in London I've been to.

A booty call from she who will not be named (cough splutter) rounded off a nice evening. It's just a shame Leicester is so far away. Oh well.

Film: Wedding Crashers

Hysterically funny comedy about a couple of guys who go around crashing weddings (funny that) in order to meet women. Inevitably one of the crashers (Owen Wilson) falls for his target and mayhem ensues - not least since the other (Vince Vaughn) has his hands tied up (if you've seen it already then bdum tish) with a obsessive and possibly psychotic ex-Home And Away actress. Fantastically politically incorrect but in a bearable way, this is possibly as close as you can get to American Pie for people with more than one braincell.

Philosophically it's great too. It claims that women are easy and shows how simple it is to manipulate... sorry no, I meant manoeuvre them. Now I'm not going to agree or disagree with that (this is but a film review, innit?), but anyone else would have been right to take notes. Play and talk with the young children and old grandmas to get the attention of a girl? You don't say. My only regret with this film is that it spells it out so clearly to its female audience.

Anyway. I have a wedding in Leicester to attend. Me whistles innocently.

New Music

Bump & Grind (Bass Mix) - Sir Aah Feat. Karamel

This one has been taken off of DJ Sanj's (of Sabrina's I Can Feel It fame) new compilation America's Most Wanted 3. It uses the backing of Rouge's latest Chinese Whispers (which isn't entirely surprising seeing as Sanj produced that too), but lays down a rap and vocal instead and in the process making much better use of it. Realising that it was Rouge that was wrong with Chinese Whispers it has now been totally replaced by this track.

America's Most Wanted 3 itself is a curious enough album, and although I didn't take anything else from it, there may be something that the rest of you might like.

Police! Stop!

For me, Fridays mean a trip to a mosque close to my workplace to pray Jummah. Of course a few people told me to skip it this week, y'know 'cos of the previous day's events, but I just shrugged it off explaining that the likelihood of anything happening would be pretty slim, bearing in mind that a guy had been shot five times this morning.

Crossing Wellington Arch, I noticed (although it woulda been hard not to) that the roundabout was filled with police vans, with around eight to ten officers per van. And I mean filled - we're talking 20-25 vans here. Clearly Wellington Arch had been made into some kinda makeshift Central Police Response Centre (and yes, I made that up myself).

So I did what any passer-by would do: whip out my cameraphone and start taking pictures. Shouldn't be any harm in that, I thought, guessing that I wasn't the first or last to do this. So I took a few and made my way to the mosque where I read my Jummah prayer.

On my way back, around an hour or so later and while crossing the same vans, I noticed that I was getting a few looks from some of the officers. Instinctively I smiled back and carried on walking. After passing them I heard and saw from the corner of my eye a van door slamming. Still I carried on walking.

I'm not sure why I turned around a few seconds later - maybe someone ahead of me was looking over my shoulder, maybe it was just instinct; more likely it was a combination of the two. Two officers were heading directly toward me, flagging me down and asking me to hold up.

They explained that they had seen me taking pictures of them and wouldn't have even given me a second thought if I hadn't adding that now they wanted to stop and search me. I'm not usually rattled by these things so I was fine with it, curious more than anything else. They went through my pockets (I've not seen that much action since primary school I tell you), asked me the standard questions for identification purposes (It's handy working in Belgravia, although surprisingly they didn't get around to asking what a Hedge Fund actually was) and called it all in. All in all, they were quite nice and polite.

I cooperated of course, because a) I've nothing against them and understand the current situation, b) I know how to handle these things and they were courteous toward me and c) some guy had been shot five times this morning. Having said that I did contest the description they put down for my hair ("Skinhead". I mean, please). Oh and I was disappointed that I didn't have to be given a shoulder number due to my being stopped under the Terrorism Act (not that I'm going to pursue this or anything).

So was it the picture taking that drew their attention to me? Possibly, but I think it was more of a legitimate excuse than anything else. When asking what they woulda done if I hadn't returned the same way they said that plenty of people were taking pictures but I'm the only one who returned after such a small period of time. I do have a very "visible" walk and smile way too much, and probably should be flattered that they remembered what I looked like, but I guess I'll never really know.

It is a bit weird being a statistic, and that of the Terrorism Act no less. And if you're curious I'm ok. I'm not even shaken or anything - I'm more amused than anything else, especially after all the claims I made this morning of life in London being business as normal. It's also interesting to experience this first hand; I've been gagging to use the ol' "So have you ever been stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act then? No? Well then SHUT UP" argument for a while now.

Anyway, here's one of the troublesome pictures that I took:


The rest are on my Flickr and I'll leave it to you to decide whether it was worth it or not. What is clear, however, is that I really should get a new cameraphone...

Book: Philosophy For Beginners, Richard Osborne

Another attempt at widening the range of books that I read (and impressing passser-bys on The Tube), this is a strange one. Half reference, half comic book, Philosophy chooses to be more of a historical analysis of the development of the subject rather than treating philosophy as a modern abstract topic.

I soon understood why though. The first point the book makes is that philosophy isn't actually well defined (much like consciousness previously), and so the only real way to approach the subject is to tackle it in the same way the big names of the past (and present) did.

Although it gets a bit heavy toward the end, the book does do a good job as an introduction to philosophy despite it's blurriness described above. I can't help feel unfulfilled however, but then I guess it was a bit of a reach to hope that a single book could give me a fix of such a complex and incomplete topic.

One to Watch

Extras, 9pm BBC2

Ricky Gervais's latest telly stunt, promising to disappoint anyone who is expecting more David Brent. I suspect that Ricky can only do Brent, but hey, I don't mind being wrong if that's not the case tonight.

Including lots of A-list cameos, I think this will be worth a go at least - especially in this television drought we're currently going through.

Shak's Choice: Evangeline Lilly

The delectable Kate from Lost, Evangeline Lilly:


Probably the first woman I've literally described as "yummy", she plays Kate who is pretty and smart and mysterious and pretty and a whole lot more.

While we're on the subject make sure you catch Lost when C4 begin to show it (which should be soon). I've already started seeing it, of course, since I'm so super l33t and have a knack of spotting a great show from a mile away (whistles innocently).

Random Bumping

On the way home last night I bumped into someone I hadn't really seen for the past ten years - since having left secondary school. For some peculiar reason we were instantly familiar with each other, like it was just yesterday we were sitting at the back of English class (since y'know, that's where all the swots sat).

Thinking about it now, we couldn't have discussed more typical subjects. We reminisced about school, complained about how fast time was flowing, and noted on how we hadn't really changed at all - well compared to everyone else who was either having babies, moving out of the country, had done jail time in the last ten years, had become crack junkies and had surprised us the most.

It was depressing, but in a nice way. Hopefully the next time I bump into my friend I'll have more to tell him...

New Music

Incomplete - Backstreet Boys

I have a theory that everyone is at least a closet BSB fan. Anyway, this is the first track off their latest album and I pretty much love it big time. I dunno it's very powerful and all that. Unfortunately the rest of the album is yet to convince me of the same sounding way too boyband for my liking.

Wonderful - Ja Rule feat. Ashanti and R Kelly

Another Ja Rule track to add to my collection (I think he and Aaliyah share the "most included on Shak's playlist" award). Classic yet different enough to keep me happy.

I Like Pussies

So the Khans have two new members of the family (names to be decided) and I spent the evening with them. They're ace. Excuse the asexual references to them in the following; we're not quite sure what the gender of the two kittens are yet.

Black cat is clearly the naughty one of the two. It was up for it straight away, allowing me to stroke and play as soon as I walked in. It also got bored pretty easily but we managed to coax it into jumping around and stuff. It did scratch me though, but I forgive it.

Tabby (if that's what it is) cat was the shy one. I say shy because I managed to crack its shell. It was eating out of the palm of my hand by the end of it, up to the point where it was doing all the work getting stroked - I just stuck my hand out.

Anyway, cats are cool. If only my mum wasn't so averse to the things I'd get my own.

Snippet

Shak says: what was your avatar?
xxx says: http://xxx/yyy
Shak says: lol!
Shak says: 1up
Shak says: you sicko
xxx says: i thought mario was spanking the princess
xxx says: but he wasn't

Saturday Gone

It just hit 6pm on a Saturday afternoon. Today's been pretty hectic, and still isn't over which means I probably won't get a chance to blog later. Here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to today.

Gym in the morning, followed by a recording session on the BBC New Talent Bus down at Chrisp Street Market (which I still pronounce like I do chirp). Yeh, I said recording session; the Beeb are looking for a new radio presenter and I've submitted a demo tape to apply. I don't think I'm entirely happy with the results (I was ermming and umming all over the place for the first half of it, but the second was much better) so I'll probably submit another one, this time recorded at home and under less stressful conditions.

I then had some lunch courtesy of the sandwich section at Tescos, where I also had a brief read of the new Harry Potter book (which I can't wait to read properly). After that I met up with the usual suspects to catch an early film (see last post), after which I'm now at home for a bit waiting before heading off to a birthday dinner.

So yes, a pretty packed day, yet strangely unfulfilling. I'm not sure why, but perhaps everything so far has been somewhat disappointing? I hope dinner makes my day, but I suspect how I feel is more to do with me than the day itself.

Film: War of The Worlds

Frankly, I found this to be a tad disappointing. Apart from a few set pieces, there was not much separating this from generic alien film #39. Tom was a good anti-hero and Fanning was again superb (just how does she manage to act so well?).

With so much else on the cinema at the moment it's hard to recommend this; it's good, but wait for the DVD instead.

Link Of The Day

The Salman Tapes

VINDICATED! I'll admit I don't understand some of it, but it's clear, like I've always maintained, that Salmon is a bit of a tit. Me == best judge of character.

Thanks to San for the link.

Link Of The Day

World press views UK's 'darkest nightmare'

Bearing in mind these were probably cherry picked, a somewhat depressing read anyway. Makes me glad to be a resident in the UK despite our own "problems".

Link Of The Day

Transformers Live

Oh. My. God.

Thanks to Rubel. Man, I hope they don't screw this up.

Catharsis

I think I'm in need of a catharsis. Any suggestions?

(Oh and just in case: Catharsis)

A Secret Blog

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Snippet

xxx says: wanna meet a girl?
Shak says: uhhh.
Shak says: excuse me?
Shak says: dude, i got asked that enough in dubai. are you practising your pimping skills again?
xxx says: me mams got a girl sorted

Book: Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, Susan Blackmore.

Despite the title, I found this book to be a pretty in depth introduction to the, quite wide and possibly intangible, topic of consciousness. Blackmore does a fantastic job of keeping the reader interested, and before you know it you're exploring some pretty complex concepts. On my way I read about dualism, religion, philosophy and other things which made it clear that the more you look into consciousness and what it is, the more it presents itself as.

It's also worth mentioning the actual physical size of the book too - it looks more like a handy tourist guide than anything else. And there's a whole range of Very Short Introductions from OUP from Theology to Kafka, and if they're anything like this one they'll be well worth reading too. More at http://www.oup.co.uk/general/vsi/.