I'm not very good at staying in touch. As a result, I haven't communicated (let alone met!) with a lot of people in a number of years. So, kind of like a blog, here's a summary of what's been happening in my life over the last few years. If, for whatever reason, you want a more detailed recounting of events, go here.

I graduated from LUMS with a BSc (Hons) in Computer Sciences (CS). I wanted to go straight into a PhD programme in the US so I stayed on at LUMS as a teaching/research assistant for a year (it helps in getting admission). I applied abroad and got in, but got no aid. Fortunately, by this time I'd realized that I didn't want to do a PhD anyway so I applied for a job at SoftWeb Corporation (founded and owned by one of our CS teachers, Salman Azhar) and was hired. I then went to work at SoftWeb's Lahore office while I waited for my US work permit to be processed.

Meanwhile, I learnt to play the drums, went trekking "up north" and made plenty of good friends.

Life at SoftWeb was good but, just before going off to the States (after I'd moved back to Islamabad to be with my family for a couple of months before heading off), the tech bubble burst and suddenly going to the US wasn't an option.

While waiting for things to settle down so that I could get a clearer picture of what to do next, I did a couple of consulting projects (websites/databases/training) for my mother's NGO (Aurat Foundation) in Islamabad. Then, as it became clear that I wasn't going abroad, I applied for and got a job at InterActive Communications (IAC), working with a LUMS-mate and former SoftWeb Colleague of mine, Yasir Khokhar.

Working at IAC was loads of fun and we did some good work, too. Then IAC opened up its media division, starting off by launching two private FM radio stations (in Sialkot and Peshawar). I talked it over with Yasir and Shahid Mahmud (our CEO) and moved over to Radio Buraq in October 2002.

I was at IAC when I met Nadia Niaz...but we'll get to that later.

Shahid's ideas for Radio Buraq were brilliant but they didn't get executed properly. I worked there for about a year and loved it...though the last couple of months were, well, really bad. As I was thinking of leaving, a classfellow from LUMS, Mustafa Rakla, offered me a completely non-CS job: running the Islamabad office of The Princeton Review (a US-based test prep company). I was hesitant to join, but the opportunity was unmissable and I knew the work would be great (especially since I really wanted and needed to learn some core management skills), so I moved there.

On the personal front, I joined a rock band called Corduroy (I was on drums and backing vocals) and started teaching at Thames Business School (first a course on E-Security and then a course on Information Technology Management)

On a much more important (and much more interesting) front, I met up again with Nadia Niaz -- the dancer, author, poet and an all-round fascinating person I mentioned earlier (though I may not have used those words!). We'd been meeting intermittently over the last year or so but it was always in a large group of friends. Anyway, in a few short months we fell madly in love with each other. By the time Mustafa called to offer me the job, things were getting serious and our parents were soon about to find out about what we had planned. But more on that later (same bat time, same bat channel...and if you don't get what that is, you're not old enough to know).

My time at TPR was really good. It was hard -- this was nothing, nothing like the work I'd done before! -- but I learnt a lot. I'd told Mustafa that I'd be working there for 6-9 months (I wanted to get back into IT as soon as possible) and so, as my time there came to an end, I got a call from Mosharraf Zaidi (a senior from LUMS), offering me a job at the Pakistan Development Gateway Foundation. I met up with Nasser Akhter (our CEO) later that day and signed up almost immediately.

On the personal front, Corduroy recorded it's debut album, The Morning After, and things with Nadia progressed in leaps and bounds. Within two weeks of her parents getting back from aborad, we were engaged. Six months later (on 1st February, 2004) we were married after which we moved in with my parents. In fact, my whole family moved to a larger house to accommodate the two of us! Remember Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals? :)

The Pakistan Development Gateway Foundation (PDGF) is a not-for-profit organization that aims to link all development-related activities in Pakistan. It hopes to do primarily this through its Country Gateway Portal. Additionally, it wants technology to do for the development sector now what it did for the business sector in the 80's and 90's: i.e. make it more efficient, effective, and much more transparent. At the PDGF, I worked the Manager Technology and Portal Services. That is, I got to handle a lot of the technical aspects of this effort. And while we didn't manage to get too much done in the time that I was there (a whopping two years!), things will eventually improve in the development sector. There were two really cool things that we did while I was there, though: (1) create and maintain a comprehensive earthquake relief information page in the aftermath of the massive earthquake that hit the northern parts of Pakistan in October 2005 and (2) help out Risepak with its earthquake relief efforts. All this time I continued to teach at Thames and for The Princeton Review, by the way.

During this time my personal life was great too. Married life is wonderful and I quit the band. How is the latter "wonderful", you ask? Well, I quit because of "artistic reasons" (yes, in quotation marks) and with those differences gone, life was a lot better. I did miss doing music regularly, but since I did get to do it off and on -- like with the F-10 1/2 Acoustic Project or with Haniya Aslam and Arooj Aftab during CityFM's 1st birthday celebrations in Islamabad -- things weren't so bad. Other cool things happened too: Nadia and I bought (well, leased) our first car. It's was black coloured Santro Club in which we installed red seat covers :) All in all, things were good.

Well, not everything was good.

Things were good till some time in December 2004 when the tumour was discovered on my mother's kidney. A rollercoaster ride later, Ami died on the 10th of March. Details are on the (attempted) tribute page I made for her. We're still recovering from the shock and probably will be for a long time yet.

Since then, however, things have gotten better. (1) My older sister, Asha, got married to a very good friend of hers, Khaqan, in April 2006. (2) My younger sister was awarded the 2006 Anne Marie Schimmel Scholarship for Women (for Pakistan) and so she is off to the University of London's SOAS to do her LLM. And (3) both Nadia and I got admitted to the University of Melbourne: she for an MA in Creative Writing and me for an MBA from the Melbourne Business School (MBS). Unfortunately, neither of us had enough funds to start either of our programs so neither of us commenced our courses in the January semester (which is the start of the school year in Australia). By March, however, I was awarded the Global Management Scholarship from MBS (which waives my entire tuition fee!) and Nadia got an loan from her father so suddenly we found that we had to get to Melbourne before the 17th of July for Nadia to start her course on time!

In June 2006 I quit my job at PDGF and in early July Nadia and I moved to Melbourne, Australia to continue our studies. It was fun moving from the worst of the summer in Pakistan to the worst of the winter in Australia :) I really like winter and really dislike summer, by the way, so this was good. So we're here now, having basically starting our lives anew.

What will happen next? Well, other than our going through our programs, we're not so sure. The programs themselves are straightforward enough -- hers is 12 months long (finishing at the end of June) while mine is 20 months long (finishing in May, 2008) -- but what we're going to do after that no one knows for sure. Tentatively, I'm hoping to stick around in Oz for a little longer to get some work experience while Nadia is seriously considering a PhD. Let's see how that goes. Meanwhile, here we are.

Wow! That was long, wasn't it? You'd have to really want to know what's been going on in my life to have read all that! And you'd have to be insane to have read the detailed version. If you have (read either), I'm impressed! Now, if you have anything to say about all this (my life, my writing, whatever), e-mail me at ameel [at] insanityworks.org. One thing people tend to comment on is how I've changed jobs every year, for example. (Well, except for the PDGF one). That is an interesting things isn't it? It's not an intentional pattern, as such. Technically I've started and left all my jobs intentionally, but the one-job-a-year timing has been purely coincidental. Sometimes, though, I did wish that I had joined some big firm somewhere and had stuck with it for many years...but then I think how boring that would have been! My life's been plenty exciting and plenty fulfilling. Finances are not bad, my working life till now has been good (overly hectic sometimes, but such is life), and I'm really thrilled about doing my MBA from MBS. Ultimately, I like where I am, who I'm with, and what I'm doing. I have nothing to complain about so, all in all, things are good :)

How are things with you? Write and tell me!

[Last updated: 12 May, 2007]