Sunday 9 October 2011

Approaching Lights.


Did you ever try to have a look through back screen of your car at night, while waiting for the signal to turn green from red? You'll see clusters of lights approaching. Lights of different vehicles approaching you. If you shun your yes, you'll see them amalgamating into one luminous beam. While looking at those cluster of yellow sparks, you can never measure how far they are, and how long will they take to reach you. But as you blink once or twice, here they will be. Vehicles, stopping one by one beside yours one, like falling stars. And, there you will realize, time runs with inexplicable speed.  

The moment when all so spontaneously, you and your siblings start to sing the song along once it's playing from the favorite part of the chorus. Eventually you stop singing like the moment never happened. And the moment is gone. The moment when you are waiting to meet a friend all so anxiously for months, and there you meet her. And the next day, all you are left with is amazement how time can turn you so blind. The moment an awesome day can turn into pathetic one by a shot of a statement without even letting you have a chance to stop it.

I had been waiting for this Declamation Competition for so long. Perhaps that I didn't even realize that it was almost a month since I came to know about it and tomorrow is the final day and I am still without a speech. I sat on Word and tried typing but nothing came flowing in. Deleted. Typed again. And finally shut down the laptop before the frustrations hovered. I knew I would screw up tomorrow so I kept on changing sides to sleep but couldn't.

Mobile buzzed.

Text: "Would you want to participate with us in this Robotic Competition?"

Now THAT quietened me even more. Cause honestly, I am not that technical sort of engineer. I would rather spend my life studying than working. I didn't know what to go for. And with the help of two of my friends, I went for the latter one. Though I didn't know how long it would take me to consider the circuit designing, how the comparator works and how would I have to burn the program in that IC. Nights evaporated over our head and Days skimmed through, and we kept on working to make on Line-Tracker Robot that was supposed to follow this one white curved line in whole of an arena. With despair and a little but of chilly hope, we kept on working and one day I woke up and realized it was Today. Final day to strike the final move.
We went. We screwed up our circuit there. We recalibrated it. Rebuild it in an hour. Re did it all over again. And there we were, out of 30, we passed to quarter finals.
The feelings of being praised over a talent and praised over a skill are WAY DIFFERENT from each other. I didn't realize that the day was over, and Robot was all gone, and fun was all deep in some pith of memory chamber of my head, until I found myself typing about it, now.

I can see, that the moments most awaited vanish as fast as they can, to go un noticed, totally. Just like the approaching lights. I didn't realize when the signal turned green and all lights beside and behind me were gone. Didn't realize that we, the bunch of 8 brains, stopped signing the song in chorus of fun, while our Robot's speed reduced to lesser than a snail's. Fun times vanish so soon, right? i already miss the afternoon and the voices we made when our robot struggled to run.



The moment is long gone.
Like many moments, I yearn to re live again.
Many, many and many of them.
I wish I could measure how long it will take the lights to approach me, so that I could prepare myself to live the awaited moment to it's fullest. Perhaps I did. Maybe, I could have more.


And Yes, you can call me an engineer now.

30 comments:

  1. .oh, the pictures...

    i have shots like that.. it's called BOKEH..

    Nice Blog you have.

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  2. Nice post "engineer":)
    Memories....ah! how much i wish to live them again too....you are so right here. One moment your laughing and having fun and the next moment its just a good memory that you wish to live again...
    Your post was really well written....keep it up! :)

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  3. The light turns yellow before it turns green.
    That's when you get a chance to reflect on things, haina?

    Madam Engineer, you need to check your mail.

    But yes, things do.. zoom by.

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  4. Memories...hmm such an odd term isnt it?
    Every moment lived turns into that.
    Engineer huh?? My Mother would be so proud of you. She wanted me to be tht :P

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  5. lol You Re calibrated it - Last Time when I opened my CPU and saw so many Green French Fries in it- I fained..@_@ May be Next time.

    The Pictures are amazing :P.

    And your eyes need to be checked too. So stop becoming Engineer and go to an Eye Specialist (I keed).

    But well Good Luck. :D

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  6. Wow.

    I went with my friends a Robotics workshop using Lego's at IBA, it was fun.

    Engineers are smart; I realized finally.

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  7. @_@ *ogling at the lights*

    "The moment an awesome day can turn into pathetic one by a shot of a statement without even letting you have a chance to stop it"
    awesome!!!

    Stay Blessed ^_^

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  8. Ah, very well-written...something I haven't given a thought to really.

    And robotics, ahahhaha. Uff. I did a workshop in NUST 2 years back. Yea, fun times.

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  9. the moments are long gone.. ohh .. cherishing the past is the best we can do.. :)

    Weakest LINK

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  10. wow, that car light thing,
    was so...........
    should i call it mesmerizing,
    ssss,
    can't find the right word,
    but it really happens,
    and u built a robot,
    wow, wow and wow. :D
    matlab top compartment is not empty, hun :P

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  11. You can burn programs into ICs?!
    Ok, i don't know what the hell that means :p
    BUT, building a robot? You sure are a good engineer then ;)

    Yeah, moments happen in a jiffy. And the memories can last entire lifetimes.
    There are, a lot of mine too where I wanted to stay long enough to enjoy the moments themselves. But atleast the memories last.

    nice post. nice pics.
    and, i love your new layout!

    (and I've given up the idea of horror flicks; concluded that i just can't be scared *proud shrug* :) do you have any suggestions for me? :p )

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  12. i had been listening to the same song for hours. and no i am not exaggerating. hours. really. and then i started reading this. and i had to stop the music. that's the kind of effect you can have with your words.

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  13. Hey Engineer,

    When you say that the moment most awaited vanishes quickly...it may mean that we do not fully appreciate the time, effort,moments which led us to that...The time taken in reaching there is not a means to an end..may be it is an end in itself..When every moment is an end...there is no perfect moment we are waiting for..but every moment is perfect..

    Now, you can call me a philosopher! :P

    How far the robot went? ;)

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  14. so missy engineer, he only thing super cool about engineers is that they make robots (well according to me).. it is a TOUGH job anyway,so ThankGod im out of it!and going All the way to NCA for architecture :D

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  15. Kharren: BOKEH? Hahah! Thanks for dropping by :))

    Rosette: You are right! Time just is more like a flash. Thankyou for finding it read-worthy. :D

    Ezazi: I WROTE AS WELL. :P

    Ovais: Yellow Light just wake us up when it's already too late to think over to live the passed moment all over again.
    Checked. Found nothing.

    Red: Hahahah. Everybody says that once I tell them I am becoming an engineer. Ask me, it bloody sucks at times. :P

    Arain: Why would you say I should go to Eye Specialist? :P

    Hamza: LEGO KIT! ;D I LOVE THOSE ROBOTS!

    The Guy In The Mirror: Thankyou so much. God Bless. :)

    Crazy Bug: THANKYOU! \m/

    Amna: Robot workshops are fun. Constructing a robot is too! Try it. :P

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  16. Rachit: Sighs. That's the only option we're left with.

    Ateeq: YOU ARE BACKKK?! :D Hahah. Yeah, guess top chamber has something little that they call brain perhaps. :p

    Mastan: Hahaha, once you'd be becoming one, burning would mean a whole different word to you. :P
    And thanks for the layout. It's quite old now though. And yeah, watch Rec. Spanish but a good one!

    Raj: Well I would consider it an exaggeration then. :p
    It's pretty hard believing that, cause.

    Kunal: Hahahaah. What a philosopher you are! But whatever you said held a meaning so true. Indeed time is a killer. :p

    Maham: NCA? Congratulations! That means you are coming to my home city. :D

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  17. The first paragraph reminded me of Karachi's traffic. *sigh* Nostalgia.

    Nice and light post, ms engineer. :-)

    PS:- the last picture is sheer lve.

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  18. oh my... i didnt know you are an engineer..i mean a practical one..and that too in robotics...hats off to you lady... yes sure time flies by and thats the only good thiing about time as no one is in perpetual state of happiness or sadness... :) bravo that you people reached quarters... and more importantly...you people did participate..thats the main thing i guess...not worrying about the result... :) best of luck for your future robots.. ms.engineer :)

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  19. The feelings of being praised over a talent and praised over a skill are WAY DIFFERENT from each other.

    I loved this LINE.

    Absolutely till you never did any technical or engineering stuff you always feel whether you have skills for it ??..

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  20. :o
    You email me then, and I'll send you what I needed to.
    ovais92@gmail.com

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  21. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  22. Hello engineer!:) Miss me?

    This is almost like my theory which goes something like this - when we're going somewhere the distance seems so long and we almost die from the excitement of it. But when we actually get there, time flies and it's time to leave; and the worst part is that the return journey seems short. Real short. Almost like you'd imagined the whole torturous wait on the way there.

    Makes sense? No?
    Naah, never mind, my brain's addled.

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  23. hey... masha'Allah an engineer eh?

    time flies away and all we can do is reminisce. we work so hard all our life for a dream to come true and a goal to achieve. but we are all somehow scared when the journey nears an end. afraid that it's going to be over. the challenge is in the way to the journey not in the destination itself. but its funny how people rarely ask how we got to a place.

    this was a thought provoking post.loved it.

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  24. Maybe the awaiting of the moments are all that we live for, rather than the time of the awaited moment.
    And then come the memories. Maybe we are destined to live only in the past, and the future. I still don't know. :)

    And I love the photographs. So surreal.

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  25. Wowwww Congrats :D

    P.S What happened to the robot??? :| Can I keep it????? :D

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  26. I have been on blogger all night and THIS is my favourite post. Seriously.
    I've probably said this before but you would make an amazing writer.
    I just love the way you express yourself.

    "The feelings of being praised over a talent and praised over a skill are WAY DIFFERENT from each other." - I know exactly what you mean, I just never knew how to put it into words.

    Oh and congrats :D
    Cherish those moments forever!
    Sometimes I like to stay up at night just reliving good times in my head, keeps me positive :)

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  27. Our country and it's maila-pan-wali universities.
    Nice

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