Fatima's Archives

Here is a writing I did on the topic: 'Describe the best and the worst weather conditions that you remember.'  Feedback would be appreciated. The best weather conditions that I remember having experienced were during my trip to Muscat, Oman in January 2014. It was winters, and was the best winters of my life. The weather was pleasant and was further enhanced by the lovely sea breeze. The mornings were cool and windy, but not cool enough to cuddle into your blanket indoors. You could go for a walk outside, maybe to the beach nearby and enjoy the weather there, listening to the sounds of the waves splashing against rocks. The afternoons were warmer. It was usually hot and sunny. You could enjoy the hot weather with a cool drink, perhaps under an umbrella at a park. The evenings were a bit cooler with a lovely breeze blowing. It would be a complete waste to spend them indoors. The best way to enjoy them would be to for a walk to the beach, or a park nearby. Many p...

Here is something I did a couple of days ago; still life done with chalk pastels. I first drew the objects with a pencil, and then coloured them, first with a single colour, and then emphasized the darker and lighter areas with different shades, using white for highlights. In the end, I coloured in the background. I've sprayed it with lacquer so that it remains safe and doesn't come off. Click on the image to see it in fullscreen.

Hello Readers! My workshop has just been announced at ERDC. This will be my second workshop which is 'Mind Games for Kids'. I will be conducting it alone this time. It is for kids aged 9-13 years (so I'm sure there'll be no one older than me there!) and will be on Saturday, January 16. In it, I'll mainly play games with the kids. One game that I'll introduce is Chess. I'll introduce Chess to those who don't know much about it, and the ones who already know can help the others. Then there'll be Chess matches. I'll also introduce Sudoku, and give Sudoku puzzles to kids (the easiest level). We'll play Twenty Questions (guessing game), word games, maybe crosswords and solve other puzzles. I hope it will be successful and that the kids enjoy. I really hope that it will be better than the blogging workshop. If you have any ideas for any games or puzzles that I can include in the workshop, do leave a comment about it. I'm looking forward to an...

Hello people! I recently attended this amazing workshop on Design Basics, and learnt a lot about designing in it. In it, we had to design a poster to promote an activity, interest or hobby which we really enjoy. I first thought about making a poster on reading, but many people were already doing that. I also thought about making something on saving the Earth, or saving the environment, but I didn't have enough ideas for that. Then I thought about making a poster on Chess. It was a unique idea, as no one else was doing it, and I really liked the way my poster turned out. It doesn't have proper illustrations, but they aren't really necessary, as the typography and the crown and knight look enough. :) Click on the image to see it in fullscreen

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...