the Jim, bharamzzZz and hookers

I am out of shape. Not noticeably. Okay not very noticeably but yeah, look and shall see. Why you would I do not know. It is immaterial anyway. You are probably weird and will be one of the happier deaths to occur when Skynet takes over the world.

So anyway, I thought I should start running. Or jogging or whatever. I wasn't in the mood to go to a jim. I grabbed the ever-willing Aines McJaleelus and started a roughly 3km run, jog, walk and stagger, all in the same session at different points in time, routine. Everyday which then began every other day, from 7am to 8am.

I have since quit. The reason is not that I have achieved my goals, nor he his. I just got bored and dont have the necessary strength of will. To wakte up at 630am every day would mean I must sleep by a maximum of 12 midnight while I was used to staying up till 6am. So I quit. Aines will probably hate me for this.

Why didn't I join a jim? I dunno. Maybe because I didn't like the ones in the area, didn't have buddies to go with to the ones I did like in the area and also because I don't have the dough for the ones that are so amazing I could go alone. But there was a jim I used to go to a couple of years ago. This post is actually about that jim and it's instructor/administrator.


The jim in question was named Power Gym. It was across the road. I had two compadres with me, Abeer the Afridi(he is a pathan, his family used to live in Punjab and he supports the PPP which is a Sindhi political party at heart) and the Kenaan(he is not as interesting, which I think he is happy about).

We went quite regularly for a good 4 months. The instructor was a bigass Balochi dude named Fayyaz. This guy was BIG. Wait lemme see I think I have a picture of him..

Yeah so that's him. Lots of shadows in that picture but as you can see(and imagine) he was muscly, very.

So yeah he was our instructor and urged us all on intermittently. Regular jim dude duties. What was noteworthy was the stuff he did besides that. Which is the following:

Work 'n Curse:

When Fayyaz would work out he'd take off his shirt, revealing his musclyness and put on this tattered vest thingy, highlighting his musclyness further. I think he wanted to impress us. Which was quite unnecessary since the myriad of pictures in his office-cum-glass box area were sufficient to that end. Anyway, he'd start his routine with a few million stretches that covered in my opinion every possible muscle in his body. I mean, it just went on and on for a good 30mins. After that he started the real deal which ended up looking more like a vocal excercise than a ...well..other areas excercise. While doing the reps of whatever he'd scream at the top of his voice for all and sundry to witness the enthusiasm and effort the great Fayyaz was putting in. Stuff like "FUCK YOU!!", "MOTHERFUCKER!!!", "AARGH BASTARD!!", "FUCKER!!". This gave further credence to the idea that everyone learns the swearwords of a language first then the rest. It was also sufficiently jarring to us all that inevitably we ended up stopping everything and looking at him which I guess was the idea.

Bharambaazi-ing:

Now Fayyaz was a big, imposing dude. Yet he suffered from the usual big-body, small...err.. sense-of-manlihood complex that I have been told most such people suffer from. He would tell us these anecdotes exemplifying his amazingness as a god among men as often as he could.

One such incident involved him going to a Balochi wedding in Karachi. Upon his arrival he was lead to a table where there were a number of handguns and was asked to choose and fire at will. In the air ofcourse. The great Fayyaz, as you should know, obviously scoffs at such minisicule shows of power. He told the cretins that he was from the old country and in his village they had much bigger guns than these impotent excuses for firearms! Hah, I say! Hah!

And then he left. Which is what amazingly cool people like him do.

Play crappy music:

WHO THE HELL LISTENS TO KAJRA RE WHILE WORKING OUT!?!?!

Ask if we knew any hookers:

Firstly, I don't. Really. I swear. Sadl..I mean thankfully. Shareef to the core and all. Moving on! At times when Fayyaz would talk to us about the world as-we-did-not-know-it, he'd invariably end up at sex. I do not know why. Also he'd invariably end up hinting he was looking for, needed, required some form of sexual release by which im guessing he meant hookers. The conversation would go something like this:

Fayyaz: Haan yaar bas boht mehnat karni parti hai itni body k liye, din raat lage rehna parta hai blahblahblah


Me/us: Hmm waqayi Fayyaz bhai, lagraha hai....(go back to working out)

Fayyaz: Aaj kal lekin koi time lagane ko tayyaar nahin hota. Larke aaj kal k boht kharab hogaye hain. Larkiyon k peechhe bhagtey phirte hain gundey gundey kaam k chakkar mein.

Me/us: ....

Fayyaz: Ye bhi koi umar hai khud batao aap? Aap khud likhe parhe ho*, aapko bhi pata hoga ye ghalat hai. Tum logon ko tu nuqsaan hai, ye tu mujh jese logon ko chahiye hota hai. Hamare liye tu zuroori hai. Itni body honay k liye lazmi hota hai k kahin garmi nikaalein.

Me/us: ji ji bilkul...acha Fayyaz bhai chalte hain hum!


*most random people explaining stuff to me say this, I do not know whether I should take it as a compliment or not



I ended up leaving that jim, not for the above mentioned reasons, I was generally busy with exams and then too lazy to go back. Further exploits in local jims I find prohibitive though and that is because of the above mentioned stuff.

given a chance
i wanna be somebody
if for one dance
i wanna be somebody
open the door
it's gonna make you love me
facing the door
i wanna be somebody

Traffic and driving in Karachi; the Ali approach.

Hello again rabid followers. I see you have yet to receive your shots. Bartender..

Ha Ha, yes that was indeed a pune.

Today's rant shall be about traffic in Karachi. How it sucks to high heaven. How shit brained motorcycle dudes do whatever the fk they want to and if antyhing happens to them it's always the gari walas fault. I mean what the hell!? A few days ago, traffic was really slow opposite my complex thingy. Cars stopped or moving real slow and what not. The whole nine yards. Out of nowhere, this motorcycle comes streaking in and around cars at around 45kmph. In out left right you name it he did it. Up ahead, on the left side of the road obviously...well not obviously, a bus had stopped(a rare occurence in karachi) to pick up some people. Motorcylce dude miscalculated his last swerve, his bike caught the end of the bus and stopped. He though, went flying on.

Ah, satisfaction.

Oh look some upstanding city folk coming to tell him off and that he got what he deserved..what...why're you helping him?? Is he alright?? Screw him! What if that was a person he'd plowed into?!? Oh please. Sigh.

Moving on. With hate.


I drive fast. Not crazy fast. More like 80-is-my-zone fast. I indicate, stick to the appropriate lanes, over-take from the correct side(the right the right!) and generally am not a douche with wheels. Nothing up there that says other people aren't, is there? Hmm nope. Cuz they are. Faggots.

One of the finer representatives of shit drivers are those who are FoB. Fresh off the Bus. I.e. theyve just moved to the city. Most of them can not read, let alone write. But somehow, they are considered fit for driving. Surely they must start off small, yes?

No.

Besides the few who putter around in those small pickups known only by the manufacturer's name, most of the others get the big stuff. Buses, tractors, trucks and lorries. Take that and apply the law of the jungle and you have some scrap metal fun. I've had quite a few brushes with these 4-6 wheeler death dealers of my own. The most recent I will illustrate.

This happens at the Karsaz Rd and Dalmia traffic intersection, for those familiar. I am going from clifton to Gulistan-e-Johar and hence from Karsaz onto Dalmia.

This is me waiting at the signal. Starting line. Pole position. Everyone around me, get ready to eat my dust.

As you can see, my signal is red. That is all that is keeping me motion-less. If you forget about all the jumping-around-to-the-radio that goes on inside the car.

Okay one signal down, one to go! I know when these guys are done, it's me! Haha! Oh hey wait...that means when they're on Yellow..I am too...I can blast-off early...

Haha! I was right! We are yellow simulataneously! Eat burnt rubber suckahzxxzzszz!!

Oh...what is that I see out of the corner of my eye....

HOLY SHIT A TRACTOR PULLING THIS TRAILER THINGY!! HE LEFT AT YELLOW TOO!! MUST BRAKE BEFORE I CRASH INTO HIM!!!

*our protagonist has not yet seen that there is not one, but two tractors. this corner-of-the-eye business is very overrated. let us zoom in a bit so that we may see what unfolds more clearly*

WHAT THE HELL THERE'S ANOTHER ONE!??! IF I KEEP GOING I'LL CRASH INTO THE FIRST ONE IF I BRAKE THE SECOND ONE WILL CRASH INTO ME!! WWBD!?

*our story continues at roughly 50kmph which, considering the proximity of the involved bodies, is pretty damn fast*

I'll only have one shot at this. I must brake hard, but not too hard, swerve to the left madly so that im clear of the first tractor and out before the 2nd one slams into me..HOLY STUPID MOVES, THE SECOND DUDE LET GO OFF THE WHEEL, WHY THE HELL ARE BOTH HIS HANDS UP IN THE AIR!?!

Bloody hell that was close.

Nobody gonna take my car
Im gonna race it to the ground
Nobody gonna beat my car
Its gonna break the speed of sound
Oooh its a killing machine
Its got everything
Like a driving power big
Fat tyres and everything

I wish, alas.

McDonalds. metal (un)detectors and bond...james bond..

Aao Jiggy hojaen.

Famous last words.

So anyway! I go with me buddy Bilal the Doggy, no idea why he's called that...by just one person, to study and shit cuz we have exams in the beginning of December. Different exams but I go anyway. I can leave the house, drive (which I happen to like) and hang out with somebody who isn't an idiot. Though I suppose other people would call us idiots if they heard the stuff we say and laugh at.

But i digest.

On weekdays, we go to the McDonalds at Seaview to study. Every weekend our relationship with them takes a downward swing. The fact that single dudes aren't allowed has nothing to do with this. We go there cuz we dont mind the chaos, they have tables at the appropriate height and cheap yet effective cappucinos. Which we are now addicted on since we've been doing this for around 3 weeks. We don't accomplish much in the 2 hours that we're there but if were the kind to think about stuff like that we would've been done with our respective ACCAs.

At McDonalds, there is a pair of statues of the man, Ronald McDonald on a pair of benches. Yes one on each. It appears that this seems to form a 'mortal enemy' image in the minds of all children of all nationalities, i.e. Pakistani and Korean. Children will climb on the benches and inflict their best attempts at a smackdown on the figures. They will slap his face, kick him in the ribs and punch his neck. I have seen this many a time.

Also, they have metal detectors. Which do nothing of the sort. Usually the guard standing besides them(guarding the detector I suppose) asks us to deposit our keys and cellphones in this tray besides the contraption while we walk through so that the arsenal we carry upon ourselves is revealed. But they never beep. Even WITH the cellphones and keys they dont beep. WHY HASNT McDONALDS NOT BEEN BLOWN UP YET?! PROOF THAT PAKISTANIS ARE NOT TERRORISTS!!

They also have metal detectors at our single cineplex. I happend to walk through them today when I went to book seats for Quantum of Solace. With everything in my pockets. The thing went nuts. It's beeping made nearly eeryone turn around and look and I could hear their thoughts as they said "OMG, Mullah Omar!......I bet he's here for Dostana..."

Curiously, the FOUR rent-a-cops besides this device didn't appear to give a shit. Or maybe i was walking so fast they thought if they did try to stop me I really would blow up.

I don't need no consolation,
I dont want no reservation.
I only got one destination and that's your dirty love,
Your dirty love.