My_Thoughts

not in any particular order, no particular topic. This page is filled whenever I have an urge to write. 

(1)-------------------

   Mr. Abdul Haq Saleemi was one of our mathematics teacher during graduation in UET Lahore[1].  Probably it was his first lecture and he started with the following equation:

                            Engineering - Mathematics=0

   It was usual practice that one or two students did not have pen to take their notes during lecture. Therefore they had to borrow from peers. Some would even request the teacher for a pen and they mostly did lent it with some joking comment. It happened in one of prof. Saleemi's class that a student asked him for a pen. He bid him a good scold and displayed his wonder over "a student without his most precious tool, a pen".  He remarked that you must have more than one pen with you all the time and in fact he displayed a few items that had pens embedded with them.  I remember he showed a key chain with a pen.

(2)-------------------

   I remember our wonderful teacher, late prof. Masood Ahmed. He taught us JAVA Programming during first year of electrical engineering graduation classes. He was rather restrict in maintaining class discipline. During one of his lectures a student came in late. He asked him where he has been coming from. He also asked, "I don't see a notebook with you. Where is your notebook?" This was winter time and the boy had jacket on. "I have one here", he said pointing to his jacket. "Oh, you are so much like a Kangroo!". The whole class roared in a laughter.

   One more Sir Masood story. It is again related to our JAVA class. He was telling about classes in Java libraries. It was during introductory classes. We did not have much idea about classes.  In fact Java is a rather difficult language when it comes to taking input from keyboard. We used bufferdreader class to trake input from keyboard as a string. Then that string was converted to int, double etc number types with rather involved string to number conversion processes. It was rather difficult as compared to BASIC or C languages. Then the procedure was simplified with a Keyboard class from Lewis and Loftus. It was not easy to put that class file in a directory and set the class path accordingly. Oops, I have totally forgot what was I going to write. Mr. Masood was telling about standard Java libraries and custom written classes. One of our class mates was very interested in programming and he would ask most questions. We felt relieved at his questions as it spared concentration intense lecture.  The same mate asked a question, "Sir is there a java sub-standard library too?". This time too class had a good laughter. Though it doesn't seem like a big joke.

   Again for the same Java introductory course and Sir, Masood. He taught the concept of clock and clock synchronization in computers with help from a marching army column. Soldiers move steps in accordance with the drum beats from a drummer. He actually demonstraated it by ejecting drum sound by his voicd and marching like a soldier in the class. It was probably best of his artistic shows in the class.

   May Allah bless his soul in heavens.

(3)-------------------

   This thought comes from my higher secondary scholl class (FSc). In second year we had to do salt analysis. In some tests the unknown compound (salt) was treated with different salts. The test resulted in some gas emission. The instructor told us that the gas is to be detected by smalling it in. One of my jolly friends asked, "Will this has any effrect on our senses?". "Yes, you'll become non-sense", it was me who answered his question immediately.

(4)-------------------

   This one is from my primary school, probably from my fourth class. Our class was invited in principal's office. He asked students how many days were there in a week? Each student gave individual answer "7". When it came my turn, I was thinking about something different, so I said "eight". Everybody startled to hear my answer. "OK, what's your explanation for eight days in a week?", asked the pricipal. To that I answered, "I have heared people say like; train visits eighth day or  I go their eighth day". My answer and explaination both were perhaps novel to the people present there and they had a good laugh.

(5)-------------------

‏Mr T A Shami was our teacher for circuit analysis during engineering graduation. He once told his own anecedot. I'll tell in his own words: " I had completed my engineering degree. One day our television set developed some fault. My family complained about the fault. So I took the TV set to a technician and he fixed the fault. Afterwards my mother said, "Godd you have troubleshooted the problem". "No, I just took it to the technician". "Then what the hell is the use of spending money on you for your engineering studies."

(6)-------------------

This story is again from sir Tabrez Aslam Shami's class. It is from the time when he was graduating from UET Lahore.  In his words," We were having a viva voce for a machines subject. When one of the examiners asked our fellow student, "Tell me what is the power of this machine?", pointing to a machine in the machine lab. "It has much power", he replied. "How about the power of this other machine?"

"It too does have much power"

"And what do you say about this machine?"

"It also has got much power""

Hence ends the story of Sir TA Shami. During all the latter lectures whenever he asked the class about some numerical, "What do you expect the value to be?". Almost always some one replied, "Sir, it has much value"

All the above discussion used to be in Urdu and I am simply translating it. With my weak English I may not have succeeded in producing the true effect of that joke

(7)-------------------

  I remember a teacher once said in our class that UET was actually founded by British in united India to train operators for new machinery. He observed that till today UET has not rose up from that level.

It seems true when one compares the number of entrepreneurs produced by UET. Really, there needs something be done to change job oriented minds of its graduates to innovation oriented ones.  In that way we may have true engineers who put there 100% share in countries economy

(8)-------------------

   During a conversation with my father we had a little difference of opinion in a matter. It was actually about the number of generations passed between to dates in history.  Father had been consdiering very small number of generations for a time period. I think he said something like a generation per century. Then I put my argument in this way, "We can't take a generation per century in any case. There is a problem. It is only possible if a man has a son at age of hundred. Then his son has a son born when he gets hundred. " Then my father retired laughing, "OK, your logic is valid. No more arguments".

(9)-------------------

   I have been using scientific calculator for decades. For angle measurement it has options as 'degrees', 'radians' or 'gradians'. However I never came to measure an angle in gradians. Today I visited wikipedia and learned form there that a gradian is a parallel measure of angles and there are 400 gradians in a circle. An interesting information about gradian is that the hundredth of a gradian used to be called a centigrade, same unit we use for temperature measurement. Hence the new name celsius was adopted instead of centigrade. I have noted Pakistan Television (PTV) newscasters always using centigrade not celsius.

(10)-------------------30-May-2011

   This is the first entry with a date. I have just got the idea that I must add date for new entry. Yesterday night I listened the book "Fermet's Last Theorm" by British author Simon Singh. I have got the book recorded in human voice in four mp4 parts. I started with part-II and listened about 3/4th of total length. The book was so absorbing that ideas kept  on flowing when I was busy hearing. I had to stop listening and started verification of 'amicable numbers', 220 and 284. Simon Singh is a great presenter of ideas. I finished his book "The code book" probably in one sitting. He has few documentary films on his website and I recommend them worth seeing. I still have got to do a lots of important work but my thoughts do not fix on one point. 

   I had to draw a logic diagram. Tried to draw ALU (arithmetic logic unit) diagram using Microsoft Visio but it turned out very tedious job. Altera's Max+II  also gets annoying. Today read Dr. Abdul Qadeer's column in "The News". He slamened on army and his voice was harmonious with my heart. We are spending billions on defence and our chief says we didn't defended overselves from American helicopters because enemy planes were ready to defend. The current statements from our leadership after Osama Bin Laden operation have been simply jokes intended to mock Pakistani Nation. Dr. Sahib has praised the leadership of Imran Khan and other young politicians. I find his proposal practicable if the described persons can get courage to lead this nation. What is his proposal? He has actually identified a few persons from PML N and PPP and urged them to come forward, put hands to gather and serve this nation.

(11)-------------------06-June-2011

Today I am revisiting paper writing in UET Library. Already have wasted time in downloading Electronics Workbench.  

Found a good document on paper writing here: http://www-mech.eng.cam.ac.uk/mmd/ashby-paper-V6.pdf

[1] I do not remember the exact course name but it included determination of volume traversed by a revolving a linear function

(12)-------------------18-June-2011

This incident is from my professional life in PTCL. The telecommunication systems need repair, maintenance activities as any other equipment or machinery does.  These activities are carried out at midnight at a time when there is minimum usage of the telecom network. You know very few people make calls after midnight. In Gujranawala there was a specially problematic "switch" that frequently did a "hang".  For many consecutive nights our staff kept on troubleshooting this fault. However outcomes were not very positive. One day we had a meeting with our Senior Manager.  The manager for troubleshooting was also present there. SM asked about the progress of the work. "Sir, we are still doing work. Today again we'll start working at 12 O' Clock." Perhaps he said 12 O'clock several times in his talk. On a final pointing to 12 O'Clock, SM said, "Please change the time a bit, you know its the time when a hand covers the hand". There was a big laughter in the room. He had been referring to very common joke about a certain community, that is considered to have lost mind at 12 O'Clock. But it is always used in the context of daytime. It was first time I heard it referring to a night time.

(13)-------------------18-June-2011

This entries matches with entry (3) above.

During my FSc (Higher Secondary School) final exams we are provided with a salt and had to detect it. I did not attend academy in Metric and FSC axcept for the short time before FSc practical exams. I attended it solely to revive and repeat my college experiments. The "Professor's Academy" offered perhaps best laboratory experience in my life. We performed tests and recorded readings. Feeling of gaining something was with me after attending this laboratory. OK, back to the story, I was provided a salt and had to detect it. Along with detection we had to write the procedure and various experiment results in the provided paper sheet. Luckily I did detect my salt correctly.  It was NaCl. There were two major tests. One dealt with finding the basic radical (Na in my case). Very first test to detect basic radical is the flame test. Pour small amount of salt on flame and observe the fl;ame color. If the flame lights up brightly with sharp yellow color, it means the compound contains Sodium. Second part of the test was for acid radical and when treated with concentrated Sulfuric acid (or perhaps I have forgot which acid), the salt usually ejected a gas that helped in detection. In my case it had to be chlorine. Luckily I had developed a special ability for detecting chlorine gas, during electrolysis of NaCl one can smell a certain characteristic smell. In short I finally did confirm it by actually tasting the compound. Aha, it is NaCl, I concluded. By the time almost whole of the class had returned papers to the examiner. I was so busy in my experiment that I did not notice people leaving. And now I had to write my observations. By this time the examiner was standing on my head demanding handing over of the paper. I had made a mistake of ot recording my results at the time, considering I had a plenty of time before me.  Though still there was a lot of time but the examiner was in hurry to. "Sir I have detected the salt and I need a few moments to write my results". "I know what you would write", he said in a rather harsh tone. By this time I started feeling nervous. It was a bit unfair to deprive me of the allotted time. Anyway, my instant flamboyant joy has soo instantly been changed to sorrow and a feel for loss. I tried to write the results as quickly as possible, in a rather ugly handwriting. 

I knew most of the students had cheated by getting the knowledge of salt by unfair means and had written there observations accordingly. In contrast to that i had performed the experiments thoroughly and had correctly detected the salt. On my way back home my classmates asked, "What salt did you have?". "NaCl", I replied. "I am sure about it as I actually tasted it at the end for final confirmation". All of my friends were astonished at hearing my say this. "Did you really taste the salt? ". "Yes I did". "And if something had happened to you. May be you had been lying helpless somewhere by now" . "No, I was sure it is NaCl".

I still feel the joy of detecting the salt just by my own experiment. Though I could not get very high grades at the end. That was to be expected. Sadly, we do not have very good traditions of conducting experiments faithfully in our labs. No body should feel surprised when such shameful statements as "We just can't fight the American technology" are heard from our leaders.