Fatima's Archives

This is another Dot Painting I did recently, also with a felt tipped pen. It's the edge of a sofa. It isn't as good as the previous one though, and I couldn't even finish it, but since it doesn't look that bad, I'm sharing it here anyway. :)

Here is a picture of a Dot Painting I made recently. I did it with a pointer, instead of the actual bamboo pen used for it, since it gets very messy. It turned out to be fine, though. It is made entirely of tiny dots. The darker areas are denser as they have more dots, and the lighter areas have fewer dots.

Ishtiaq Ahmed was a great Urdu fiction writer who passed away yesterday at Karachi Airport. He was around 71 and died of a heart attack. He was known all over Pakistan for his books, especially his detective series. He has written over 800 books, mostly mystery novels. He is well known for his ' Inspector Jamshed series ', which he started writing long ago; they used to be available even when my parents were kids. He has also authored an ' Inspector Kamran Mirza series', and a ' Shoki brothers series'. They are all mystery novels, where the main charters have a very confusing different case to solve each time. You have to rack your brains thinking who would be the actual culprit, and often, the culprit is someone who seemed least likely to be one. I and my sister really love to read novels from his 'Inspector Jamshed' series. In fact, it was his novels which brought me closer to Urdu language. After reading some of his novels, I also started reading ...

I visited Javed Manzil, or Allama Iqbal Museum, as it is also called, in October this year during a trip to Lahore. The museum used to be the house of the renown Poet of the East; Allama Muhammad Iqbal.  The place was constructed a few years before Iqbal's death, and he constructed it on his own expense. However, he dedicated the house to his son, Javed Iqbal, thus calling it Javed Manzil. Since he had given the house to his son, and he had to live in it as well, he actually paid his son the rent for the four rooms he occupied in the house. A few years after Iqbal’s death, the Government of Pakistan bought the house from Javed Iqbal to turn it into a museum. The museum was opened for the public in 1984. Once inside the museum, a guide showed us around and told us lots of things about the house. In one corner, Iqbal’s prayer mat was laid out the way it used to be during his life. Hanging above it were some verses of his poetry. Many of the rooms of his house had been tur...

I had the idea for this story for ages, and I finally decided to share it on my blog. This is just a part of the story, I might make it a prologue, or perhaps insert it somewhere in between. It isn't exactly a glimpse, since I don't think you'd call 700 words a glimpse. XD I plan to make it a novel. Please comment and tell me what you think about it, and whether you'd like to read more or not. Feedback and constructive criticism will be appreciated. “So you can now operate the machine, and I hope I can leave you to look after the shop when I’m gone.  Now we have to see how you deal with customers.” The stationary shop in-charge said. “And we can find that out quick enough, as I can see our first customers of the day coming.” Two college students, about the boy’s age, were coming towards the shop, carrying heavy bags filled with books. He eyed them with a pang of envy, thinking that if his life hadn’t taken that unexpected turn, he might have been like one o...

Hello People! I'm sharing my art dump here. It's a scratch project, in which I've put in a lot of my artwork which I've done in my life. Of course, it doesn't contain all the artwork I've ever done, but it does have some of the good ones. Click on the green flag to begin, and then use the right and left arrow keys to go to forward and backward. Constructive criticism, feedback, and advice is always welcome in the comments. Thanks for viewing!

Hi guys! I and my sister Zainab recently made some posters for ERDC seminar, 'Who fails when a child fails?' for the Poster Exhibition. There were around forty more posters displayed there, made by the participants of PTCC Batch 22. Of course, their posters were a lot better than ours, but then, who's comparing? :) I'm sharing my posters below: I made them on A3 sized pages. The first one shows a girl in a school uniform thinking about how boring her school life is, and she always has to do her school work, home work, prepare for tests and exams, do assignments, take tuitions, etc. It's mainly what goes around in an average child's life. The second poster shows a child, his teacher (the one on the left) and his parents. They're angry at him because he has failed. I've written 'Who's fault is it?' because that's the situation in many families in which a child fails. The parents and teachers don't fully support him when he needs...

I was recently going through my old art-pads, and I realized that I used to be a lot better in art than I am right now. Here are some of  the pictures I liked, so I'm sharing them here. I drew\ painted them sometime in September 2013. Click on each pictures to see it in full screen mode. Enjoy! A scene of a forest I painted. A beach and a Coconut tree I painted. A Coconut tree and a bench. I drew this using a  black felt pen and coloured in it with oil pastels. A lamp post. I sketched it in a park, and painted it at home.

Hello Readers!  Sorry for not posting for a long time. Here is an article I and Zainab wrote for the Blogging Workshop we conducted. Zainab wrote it first, and then I edited it and rewrote the first two paragraphs. A week after the blogging workshop, it was distributed in the ERDC Seminar, Classwork Homework Interdependence, where it was distributed among about  400 people  in the audience! (Cool, isn't it? I can only say that at least half the people didn't know it was written by kids!) Here it is: During our childhood, we all do some amazingly creative work, like a piece of artwork, an interesting story, some craft work, and more, which is really appreciated by everyone around. But of course, it won’t stay forever. After some time, the stories written with ink fade away, and the drawings get ripped and torn, and a time comes, when these things are thrown away. These things do not deserve to be thrown away. They could be the initial stages of a genius, or a scien...

Hi everyone! I recently attended a workshop at L2L Academy, on 'Hydraulics'. In it, we got to learn the concept of hydraulics, which can be demonstrated using syringes and a pipe. Cranes and many building machines function through hydraulics. In the workshop, each participant had to make a toy crane by themselves using the basic concept of hydraulics, and using pieces of wood, syringes, pipes, nails, water, and a few other materials. Each person had to design and make their own crane. Here I'm sharing a video which shows how it works:  Below are pictures of the crane in every position it can be in: Please tell me if you like it and give feedback in comments. (I love getting comments!)

Hello Readers! Here is a poem I wrote about the situation in Pakistan, how we are dependent on Domestic Help to work for us. I had originally decided to write an article on this topic, but when I sat down to write it, I somehow couldn't. So I expressed it in a poem, which I think would also be more interesting than an article. Hope you like it. Comments would be appreciated. A problem we face in this country Even though we claim to be independent The truth is that we are not And are actually more dependent! Dependent on the servants to sweep our floors, And the drivers to drive our vehicles We depend on a Cook to cook our food, And from a shop we purchase our pickles. We hire maids to do our housework, Which includes cleaning, washing and sweeping We order them about, and while they work, We ourselves go back to sleeping! Now, is this routine right, after all? Is this correct, what we do? Is it supposed to be this way or not? And is it fai...

Hi folks! This is the presentation I used in the workshop. It was very basic, so it may seem too simple for those who already know how to blog. I'm sharing it anyway, for those who want to learn how to blog. Thank you.

On the morning of Saturday, April 25, I woke up with a start as the alarm went off. The first thing that came to my mind was my workshop. Yes, today I, along with my sister Zainab, was going to conduct a workshop for kids on Blogging. I had been thinking and planning this workshop for weeks. I had prepared the handouts, which were six pages long, containing ‘Steps for making a blog, posting, and commenting on it’, ‘Guidelines for smart blogging’, my article, ‘The Importance of Commenting on a Child’s Blog’, an article Zainab and I wrote; ‘Why should you have your blog and what can you do on it’, and a recommended blog list containing links of mine and my friends blogs. I and Zainab had also made a presentation for the workshop. The workshop was supposed to begin at ten. It started on time with twelve participants. The age group was ten till fourteen years. I started the workshop, by first introducing myself, followed by a round of introduction of the participants. They had...

Hi everyone! I recently made a project on Scratch , remixed it actually. There was tag going on, to make your own food character. Someone started it, and tagged five others, who had to remix it with their own food character. Then those five tagged five more, and so on. Kenza , tagged me a few days ago; someone had tagged her. I'm sharing my food character that I made on paint. Below is my project. To see my project on Scratch, go here .

Hello Readers! I haven't posted much recently, as I was very busy with a few things. One of them is that I will actually be conducting a workshop soon! Yes, really, I and my sister Zainab, will together be conducting a workshop for kids aged ten till fourteen years. (And I'm still thirteen!) So I was busy in planning it, making handouts, and thinking about it. Below is the flyer, which I and Zainab made on Powerpoint; my father edited it. It is also shared on ERDC's facebook page . Thanks.

Here is a story that I wrote recently on a topic of a past O level paper. Please keep in mind while reading it that this is the third draft  of the story. Feedback would be taken seriously and appreciated. An instantaneous splash of water landing on the deck woke up the sailor. He leapt out of bed and hurried up to the deck, hoping that all was well. The situation was worse than he had anticipated. It was raining cats and dogs, accompanied by a very strong gale. The roar of thunder indicated the beginning of a storm. The bottom of the ship was already flooded about six inches deep with water and its level was increasing with the rain. The sailor quickly rang the siren for help and grabbed some buckets. Sleepy-eyed men came out of their cabins to help and he directed them towards the flooded area, where he handed out buckets and yelled out instructions. His voice was barely audible over the heavy rain and thunder, but they seemed to understand. They went to work at once, ...

Hello Everyone! I've just realized! It's been a year since I started blogging! I am so... excited -for apparently no reason! I made my blog on 12th March, 2014. I published two posts that day. They were two of my poems; Siblings  and Desserts . Then I started blogging regularly - well, not so regularly. I have 37 published posts on my blog from 12th March, 2014 till 11th March, 2015, which averages to about three posts each month - which is not too much, but still, something's better than nothing! And I have made sure to post something each month, so there's no month in these twelve months when I haven't published any post.  I do try to post as often as I can, whenever I create anything worth posting. In these twelve months on blogger, I have: Created a blog Published thirty-six posts on it Gotten 207 comments on it (including my own replies) Made an About Me  and a Coming Soon page on it Had 2113 page views on it And a lot more! So than...

This is a presentation I made for Thinkers' Club . It published on its blog as well. It contains my own opinions about Boredom and what I do when I am bored. Feedback would be appreciated. Thank you. 

This is a picture of the second canvas I painted. It is painted with Acrylic paints, like before. Hope you like it. Feedback would be appreciated. Thank you. Find out more: My first canvas painting

Written on the behalf of Fatima(me), Zainab, and Ibraheem dedicated to our friends, Azka, Ayan, and Abiha You are the best friends we've ever had Please don't ever leave us, that'll make us sad All the lovely memories include you and us You're the ones whom we really really trust Two is a couple, three is a crowd But together we're six, (and really loud!) Remember the day we went together to a park? All squashed up in a car, as happy as a lark! And the times we sat down to play Taboo Or hide and seek or just shouting Boo! The hundreds of times we've had lunch and dinner together All we haven't done yet is a great big sleepover! We meet you every week, and sometimes more often, And through letters and emails and chats now and then! Friends we are and friends we remain Till the last day, or till we're all slain.