A Green Leaf-Like Bug!

These images are the courtesy of a friend in Pakistan. I didn't try to discover if he loves photography, but I am sure that these are awesome captures. This would definitely amaze anyone like me; anyone living in a place where you waste 2 hours of planning after seeing a couple of dead cockroaches around the kitchen cabinets :p

Anyways, This thing is called Microcentrum retinerve. It sounds something like this; actually, this is how I can recall that it's very common around. Following is it's classification:

• Class Insecta
• Order Orthoptera
• Suborder Ensifera
• Family Tettigoniidae
• Species Microcentrum retinerve

[image courtesy: Yawar Abbas]

How to quantify the frustration of our youth!

Ok. First of all, a disclaimer - I wasn't looking for one of these predicted results!



My query was like "how to know if a timing belt has been changed". After driving a car for 5-6 years back in my country.. all I learned about the technicalities of cars was limited to refueling it, excellent gear shifting, and racing with odd one outs in random traffic. I am also proud of the fact that because of me and my driving skills, a number of human beings thanked God sincerely that He saved them, who knows that might be a turning point in their lives to submission to All-mighty :D

Anyways, I wanted to search for some articles about discovering the last time a timing belt of a car was changed.. there was this civic (yeh still looking for a car), the owner didn't had any related receipt/records, so I thought that there must be someway for a mechanic to get to know this by a brief inspection.. that's it, over and out.

the ridiculous perspective.

Sometimes you want to sit & think, but sometimes you just want to sit. Sometimes you want to plan out things, but sometimes, you just don't want to think about plans. This isn't ridiculous, because I am sure that many a times we miss the 'kid' that we once were. That kid was so natural, free of troubles, and all stuffed up with naive patriotism and the desires to score high in games, only. Yes, I miss him, no shame!

But, above all, no one's to blame here; I know we're supposed to move on. I'll move on, Inshallah, but I have my memories.. so deep-rooted somewhere that no brainwashing detergent can erase their traces. I feel of the recap as a seizure, a malfunction.. but when I recover from it, I always pop out with a lesson, a simple and clean guideline for the incoming tremors. And, I move on.

Still sometimes, I desire a free fall, as in skydiving; but sometimes, I just want to dive and fly away..

My car buying experience

First of all, I still couldn't buy one.. but anyways, I had 3 close encounters of actually wasting up my super duper budget of 3500$ on the following cars (after analyzing 25+ cars):

1 - 1997 civic ex coupe automatic
2 - 1999 civic ex sedan automatic
3 - 2000 civic ex coupe automatic

For 1, we settled for a done deal happily. Later, the carfax tells me that the car has a rollbacked odometer. Amazingly, we couldn't guess it from the extremely humble speech of the seller that he's perhaps being untruthful and that the rollback amounts to 45000 miles!

Exhausted, as well as excited.. I went for 2, perfect history, affordable, I am all ready.. and there you go.. sold-out! [yehh and didn't care to take off the advertisement from the list!]

The biggest blow, number 3. Not affordable, but for the price a great deal. So, I thought I'll drag my budget a little more. I did that. After a bunch of email ins and outs, we decided on a meeting time. I was desperate to just get it for whatever it had, for any extra cost. And once again, I receive an email: "Sorry, sold out!" Perhaps, what’s most disappointing about this one was that the seller listed it for ~4000$ and I wanted to get it for $3600 and he sold it for $3400 !!! Yeh, i know something's wrong.. :(

So, I've 20 days more days to stay patient.. then my carfax account will expire.. and I am not going to think about a car anymore..

Recommendation for craigslist: as soon as an item is sold-out, something should force the seller to close his advertisement.

Recommendation for buyers: as soon as you find out a good deal, don't wait for another good deal, don't push your luck :p

Recommendation for sellers: if you can't negotiate, don't face the buyers ;)

Status: sitting on notebook watching couch (& eating carpet)

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