The Soothing Vibes - YOU Magazine, The News International

The Soothing Vibes

With its warm lighting, well-placed paintings and comfortable seating, the interior of Ole creates a warm ambiance

By Waqas Hassan Sharif

Photography by: Naqeeb ur Rehman

DATED: [22-04-2008]

Ole is one of the new breed of high-quality, gourmet restaurants that have recently blossomed at Zamzama. It has a very neutral environment - neither very loud nor very formal.

The very name Ole expresses joy and excitement and upon entering the restaurant one does feel happy to see the interior which is just pretty as punch. The restaurant's eclectic interior is spacious and modern. It has a seating capacity of 40 to 45 people. With its warm lighting, well-placed paintings, and comfortable seating, the interior creates a warm ambiance and manages to communicate a certain slick urbanity. The over all colour scheme revolves around dark brown and green with a tinge of maroon.

"I always had a passion to open up a restaurant but did not have any experience. I finally decided to go for it when I met Mr. Mehboob Khan (who is a renowned chef). He rendered us his consultancy services. The entire menu, setting up the kitchen and staff training is done by him," says Nadia Rizwan, the managing director of the restaurant.

However, for furniture and basic interior designing Nadia has consulted Ifran Chaudary, an interior designer from Lahore. "The rest of the interiors, or you can say trimmings, are done by my husband Rana Rizwan whereas posters and pictures are done by Ali Memon. We tired to create very soothing ambiance through soft lighting, dark brown furniture with colours of green and maroon in interior. We wanted to keep the interior very simple yet stylish," explains Nadia. One is also inspired by the exquisite cutlery and crockery. The cutlery is made to order with the logo carved on it. It's done from Pak Alam Cutlery from Sialkot. Not only that, their especially designed crockery is also made to order from Clayworks with colours that reflect the overall theme of the restaurant. The couple has plans to enhance the interiors. "We will be putting more nice pictures on our brown pillars and walls. We have also planned to enhance our bar. At the moment it's very simple. We have plans to make some shelves to display bar related stuff like bottles, crockery etc," says Nadia.

Ole offers a la carte dining. The intriguing menu items are all artistically presented with the option of assorted desserts. Guests have the opportunity to tickle their taste buds with a variety of meat or fish dishes. "Our basic aim is to provide people with something different and delicious. Our chef Mudassir Siddique has worked 6 years in Dubai's finest restaurants but the credit goes to Mehboob Khan who has set an exotic menu and trained the staff accordingly," informs Nadia. However, the non-traditional desserts are possibly the best thing on the menu. The portions are a little on the slim side, nonetheless the ambiance and friendly service make each of the small bites special. The service is excellent and prices, while they might be a bit higher than elsewhere, are more than justified by the wonderful cooking.

The restaurant caters to all age groups. According to Nadia a lot of stuff is planned for future. "At the moment we are catering from 5 p.m. onwards. In future we plan to open for lunch too. We have also planned to have Jazz nights once a month. Then Website is also in plan; we have thought of a very interactive website where people can make reservations, win free food get all the info about our latest offers etc."

With an outstanding interior, great music, a cosy and welcoming atmosphere, efficient and friendly service, everything about Ole has a feel-good factor. You know when you have a special anniversary and somehow the very significance of it gives you the yips, and you can't think of anywhere to go! This is the right place for you.

The Commando And The Chick - Us Magazine, The News International

Story
The Commando And The Chick

By Waqas Hassan Sharif

DATED: [18-04-2008]

Five thousand feet above the highest battle ground in the world in the mountains of Siachen; it was pitch-dark when the injured commando was finally able to take shelter in a cave. After catching his breath, he took stock of his situation. He was out of ammunition, his wireless had been battered when he had fallen down after his parachute had become entangled in a tree, and he was being chased by the enemy. Drawing a deep breath, he reached into his pocket and took out the photograph…of his first and only love, Saima. At such a difficult time those pretty, I mean fat eyes, were what electricity is to Karachiites. For those of you who are thinking 'who is Saima' yes, you are right; she's the famous Lollywood actress now happily married to Syed Noor.

Thinking that Saima was no longer single almost gave our brave commando a heart attack in his kidneys. As our brave hero started to gear himself up, he saw a bright light at the end of the cave. He got confused and thought for a moment that the enemy had caught up with him. He started to walk towards the light and saw a beautiful girl with big yellow eyes, long lush brown hair oiled with sarsoan ka tel and a nose which resembled that of Pinocchio. Amidst such chaos - a heavy battle going around and sounds of the double barrel guns - the view of that beautiful chick in the cave for our soldier was again like electricity to Karachiites.

"Who are you?" The soldier inquired.

"I am the Tooth Fairy Chick."

"The Tooth Fairy! What are you doing here?"

"I am supposed to help a brave, injured soldier, have you seen any lately?" The chick replied.

"Yes, I am the one. I mean I am injured and need to contact my base station. Can you help me?"

"Of course," the chick replied.

"But how? Do you have a wireless?"

"No, but I have transport available. I will get you to the nearest hospital. You are bleeding very badly."

In the meantime, a heavy shell hits the cave and the walls of the cave start to collapse.

"We should hurry! The enemy has found us. Where's your transportation?" the soldier asked.

The chick leads the commando to a car.

"Wow! The new Ferrari. How did this machine land here?"

"It's a WHS story, so anything is possible. But don't worry, we won't be using her."

"But why? We need to move fast."

"It's out of CNG aur waise bhi 1600 CC se ziada per ban hai, waise I have got a Honda CD-70," boasted the chick.

"What? Why CD-70?"

"Because main tae Honda ie liesaa!"

"Fine, but don't tell me that the bike is out of petrol."

"Nahi, nahi, diesel full hai tank mien."

The solider and the chick embarked upon their bike journey and it started galloping its way through the mountains and the war zone.

The Chick: "Please stop at the next roundabout."

Solider: "Why?"

"I need something to eat for our journey, there's a tuc-LU shop over there."

The Chick: "Yo pan wala dude, please pack 2 meetha pan and 2 rupees ki tasty chalia and 3 rupees ka city gutka."

Pan wala dude: "Yes, sure. That would be Rs15.

"Oh, I am 2 rupees short!"

"Don't worry, Chick. We accept credit cards."

"That's cool. Let's move, soldier boy!"

Our hero and heroine proceed towards their destination!

The Chick: I am bored. Can you please switch on the radio?"

Soldier: You have a radio! On this horse? Wow!

"Hello, I am your crazy RJ >DJ>VJ and you are listening to your favourite radio station FM-W11. Request your songs live right now on 111-111-W11. Right, now our first request is for the song Hungami Halat by Atif Aslam. Enjoy!"

The Chick: I don't like Atif Aslam, can I request a song?

Soldier: "And how will you call this radio station?"

"From my cell phone, DUH!!!!"

"You have a cell phone?" asked our soldier boy angrily.

"Haan na, mera naya KG LPG 125. Full time masti non stop fun! Saab kuch tu hai is mien."

"Why didn't you tell me? I would have called my base station!"

"Ouch! I have no credit."

"Pehle nahi bata sakti thi, pan wala dude se easy load kerwalete.

"I am sorry."

A Concorde - 747 bomber arrives and starts bombing our cold couple. Our brave hero, in a desperate attempt to save our heroine, takes the bike deeper into the woods, that too in Siachen. The thick snow covered trees provided cover to the couple.

The Chick: "Oh, an uncle of mine lives down the next lane. We can make a pit stop over there."

A fierce snow blizzard starts and the commando is forced to meet the uncle. They enter the cottage and find a man sitting alone by the fire-place having a big jug of espresso lassi.

Soldier: "Hello, can you help us?"

The man with the big espresso lassi jug turns round and our commando gasps in surprise.

"General Sahab, aap!"

GPM: No, dear. I am retired now, but yes you are still going to salute me."

"What in the world are you doing here and in uniform?"

"It's – 40 degree C BRRRRRR!! Please yahan utarnay ko mat bolna; and yes, you can salute me now.

"I am sorry, sir, but you know the rules. I have to contact the base commander. Do you have some sort of communication with Siachen base camp?"

"No, I don't. But you are safe here for the time being."

"Sir, I am a commando and I have to carry my mission out."

"Ok, I understand. Let me do some thing. I will be back in a couple of minutes. Till then there is a first aid kit here. Get your self patched up."

GPM leaves the room, leaving the chick and Mr. Commando alone in the room.

The Chick: "Hey, I got the first aid kit. Let me help."

She starts to band aid the soldier.

The Chick: (extremely softly) "You know you are kind of cute and I'm kind of cuter and we are the leading male and female characters in this story. So if we go according to our script, it's high time that we go for a romantic song now."

Soldier: "I think we should, but first tell me one thing: is this a First Aid kit or Flirt Aid kit?

Romantic Song:

Gulabi galooo wali

Sharabi ankhon wali

Hasinaa itraati hai kitna!!!!

Papi papi papi chuloo

Please zara ja ke muo tu dholoon

Kachra re Kachra re

Tere Kaare Kaare naina

Tujhe dekha tu ye jana sanam

Hungaaaaami Halaaat

The Chick: "What was that?"

Soldier: "That's an extract from the Shakespeare poem competition about to be held in Us magazine."

As soon as the song ended, the chick got a call:

"Haan, Chick, it's me – GPM."

The Chick: "Yes, what happened"?

"Get me the commando."

Soldier: "Sir, please give me good news."

"Yes, it's good news. A helicopter evacuated me 2 minutes ago and I am in Isloo now."

"Sir! What about Us?

"Haan Us, dekho woh corner wali table per hai. Read it and enjoy!

But how does the story end?

To find out the fate of our dashing commando, the editor should ask the interested writers to send in the ending to WHS at 'nut_crack@lululand.com'

After all, it's a WHS story! Anything is possible.

Tech Talk - Us Magazine, The News International

Tech Talk

Compliled by Waqas Hassan Sharif
Dated: [4-APRIL-2008]

Toshiba Satellite X205-SLi4 Laptop

Toshiba doesn't take it slow when it comes to updating the Satellite brand. Ever since the company launched its first gaming laptop--the Satellite P105-S921--in early 2006, the torrential downpour of beastly laptops equipped with powerful graphics cards hasn't ceased. As of this review, Toshiba has a total of nine laptops that target gamers, four of them legitimate contenders against big names like Alienware, Dell, Gateway, and Voodoo. The Toshiba Satellite X205-SLi4 is the latest gaming laptop to emerge with Intel Penryn processor and 3GB of Ram. It comes with dual 160GB hard drives (320GB total), dual nVidia GeForce 8600M GT card and a price tag of $2500.

The sheer size of this system is anything but subtle. It weighs 8.9 pounds, about a third of a pound lighter. Toshiba at least makes good use of all this heft, equipping the X205-SLi4 with a gorgeous 17-inch widescreen. It's a multimedia workstation suitable for high-definition videos, advanced photography and video projects, and even some light CAD work. Despite the unit's powerful components, the Toshiba's 65-Wh battery proved too small for such a large system, managing only 1 hour 25 minutes

Website review:
All Music

Looking to bone up on your musical literacy? There's no more complete a resource than All Media Guide's allmusic. Launched in 1991, AMG is an exhaustive resource for music chronologies, history, biographical information, and criticism, compiled by more than 900 writers covering rock, classical, jazz, folk, hip-hop, electronic music, and every other genre under the sun.

Visit www.allmusic.com

IMBD:

Without doubt, this is the most complete movie guide ever: up-to-the-minute movie news, actor and filmmaker bios, and unbelievably detailed indexing of every aspect of every film and TV show you can remember. Plus, the new IMDb Synopsis feature allows collaborative editing for contributors to directly add/update/edit/

delete in-depth synopses for movies and TV shows free of commentary and blissfully filled with plot spoilers.

Visit www.imdb.com

Tips and Tricks for Windows XP

1. System Info

To check System Info, go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type 'systeminfo'. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type 'systeminfo > info.txt'. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).

2. Directly Delete Files:

You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run... and type 'gpedit.msc'; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gped it will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care -- some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only).

3. Lock your XP

You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that's not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.

4. Rename a series of files

1) Open the My Pictures folder. (Click Start, and then click My Pictures.) Or open another folder containing files that you want to rename.

2) Select the files you want to rename. If the files you want are not adjacent in the file list, press and hold CTRL, and then click each item to select it.

3) On the File menu, click Rename.

4) Type the new name, and then press ENTER.

5. To change Drive letters (useful if you have two drives and have partitioned the boot drive, but the secondary drive shows up as "D")

Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management, Disk Management, then right-click the partition whose name you want to change (click in the white area just below the word "Volume") and select "change drive letter and paths."

From here you can add, remove or change drive letters and paths to the partition.

6. Disable CD Autorun

1) Click Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC

2) Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System.

3) Locate the entry for Turn autoplay off and modify it as you desire.

-- Compiled by WHS

The First Impression - YOU Magazine, The News International

The First
Impression

DATED: [1-APRIL-2008]

Interior decoration gives customers their first impression of a cafe. Nicely decorated, Kahva is not just a place to imbibe but dine too...

By Waqas Hasan Sharif

Photography by
Naqeeb ur Rehman

The two elements present in successful restaurants are delicious food and a dynamic and memorable ambiance.

Today, the new coffee houses - and they are plenty @ Zamzama - offer a mid-way solution for the younger generation of yuppies who can afford to pay for an over-priced drink, croissant or a sandwich in a relaxed environment. Recently, Karachi has seen the opening of 'Kahva', another trendy cafe, at SMCHS.

The interior of Kahva is quite airy and bright. It focuses on lighting, colour, intelligent furniture layouts, floor plan design, ingenious decoration and accessories. The focus was on creating something that's very simple yet unique.

Kahva is a joint venture of Arman and Sharay Shams who are childhood friends. "We have come up with Kahva to offer the people in SMCHS and nearby localities a comparative, if not better, ambiance and dining experience - keeping in mind the relatively price sensitive nature of this market," says Arman, an IBA graduate.

"Interior decoration gives customers their first impression of a cafe. If you are opening a new cafe, you should stress on the looks of your setup. Exterior and interior both are important aspects but your customers will spend more time inside your restaurant, so interior designing consideration is more important," he adds.

It's interesting to note that the basic interior designing has been done by Arman and Sharay themselves. "We've worked around a wooden floor, dark wood and leather trimmings and blended them with lightly coloured walls adorned by various paintings to create a cosy, yet comfortable and rich atmosphere."

Furniture is one of the most integral parts of creating an ambiance. The furniture at Kahva basically includes sofas or couches which relaxes your mind and body. They worked closely with Mrs. Saima Shahbaz, a furniture designer, in choosing the right kind of furniture - from initial design to fabric selection to production of their furniture.

According to Arman what sets Kahva apart is that they offer their guests the best of both worlds - fine dining and gourmet coffee. The cafe also has Wi-Fi and fast Internet connection provision, for the busy ones to have their meetings and discussions over a cup of coffee. "There is no other place that offers its customers a lounge area for coffee lovers as well as a dining section with a full course menu. We have seating capacity of 62 which is a rarity in other cafes of Karachi."

Arman believes that effective decor does not require spending a lot of money. "People will feel more relaxed and comfortable if the decor is not too rigid or grand.

Though primarily a cafe which offers a variety of coffees, it is the food menu that catches the eye here. It is exhaustive. "Though the coffee shops serve great coffee, the biggest complaint against them is that they don't have good food to go with the coffee. They mostly have microwaved dishes. At Kahva we offer a wide range of options from chicken to seafood, steaks, pastas and sandwiches. Also, we specialise in grilled entrees. We have coffee tables for the customers coming in for a quick snack and their daily intake of caffeine. Dining tables to cater to the lunch and dinner crowd, and lastly a large lounge with comfortable leather sofas where customers can kick back and relax while sipping on their cocktails," informs Arman.

The dynamic duo vow to maintain the quality and high standards of the cafe in future.

This coffee place is like a comfortable home and stress-free zone not only for youngsters but for elders too... So, go and enjoy it with a cup of fresh coffee or a yummy dessert.