Pages from My Diary

I am not a published or self-published author; but I am well aware of the hassles associated with creating a good book cover. I opened my account on Wattpad around 4 years ago, but started uploading stories this year. I had no idea that I was supposed to upload a cover to go with my story. At first, I did not want to go through all the trouble, but then soon I realized that creating a good book cover can actually gain you some readers. I started looking for free photos on the web for my first short story, and found one on a website. I did the same with the second cover as well. The process was definitely not easy. I had to look up for hours and had to determine whether the photos I had found would actually be consistent with the theme of my story. Then checking license and rights and the likes would take another hour or so. I could actually write a whole short story in that time.

I am not sure if any such challenge exists. I guess I just made it up. Hey all, sorry for not updating my blog for such a long time. Well, I have been busy doing nothing. You know how I am! So, the other day I thought of pushing myself to see if I can reach a certain word-count limit. My writing has been the epitome of sloth in the past few weeks, and I could barely squeeze out more than 2,000 words per day (that too, if I sat in front of the computer for at least about 7-8 hours at a stretch). I have also been meaning to write a short story lately because I had kind of started to miss writing the words 'The End'. Writing a #shortstory . Target: 10k words. Deadline, TONIGHT. 12:27PM here. I will live-tweet progress. This should be fun. #amwriting — Mehnaz Tabassum (@mztabassum) July 20, 2015

I have wasted around 1000 precious hours of my small life looking at the blue-white pages of Facebook. But the sad truth is that  there is essentially nothing to watch. 

Homemade pasta is a delight, and when it comes to creamy pasta, I can never resist the urge. After spending plenty of money at restaurants, I finally decided to give this one a try at home. Although most of my cooking experiments fail first, this one turned to be quite successful; so, sharing my experience with you all here. Here is what it looks like.

"So, what do you want to do in life?" this was the common question people used to asked me when I was about to take my HSC exams. My answers used to be definite. I was younger, immature, but I had a set plan for my life. I knew what I was doing, what I was aiming for. Today I am that same girl, albeit a bit older; but when someone asks me the same question, my answer is: Error 404: Answer Not Found. Image Credit: Danilo Rizzuti at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

[A post on good and bad memories of 2014 and resolutions for 2015.] Another year is gone from my life. Time truly flies. This time it was literally gone with the blink of an eye. It still feels like January 2014, except I am twelve months late. Wishing you all a very happy new year, and hope that you will live your life to the fullest, achieve whatever you dream of (or at least get one step closer to achieving it) and stay healthy all through 2015. Image Credit: Freedigitalphotos.net

To say I am disappointed with my life in this country would be the understatement of the century. I believe most of you had read my post about my phone  getting stolen with utmost pity (written in February, 2013). Well, get ready to summon all of those condolence once again, because the same incident has happened to me once again! I am not short of a celeb, because this time the thief took her time to come to my house and steal it from right under my nose!

I went to visit my grandma today, and found my 3-years-and-something-months old cousin playing GTA: San Andreas on his father's computer. "What's the big deal? He was probably just running a car around the streets." "One of his sisters must have turned it on for him.  Wasn't she just playing a game like Candy Crush Saga?" No! He did all of that himself!

Well, I am not really sure if I should call it madness, because I am certain that many readers out there do the same. If you are the type of reader who has more books on his/her to-read shelf than he/she can finish in this lifetime then I believe you already understand the immense pain that we have to go through right after finishing a book. The single question that jolts us awake in the middle of the night is: What to read next? Okay I might have made it a little too melodramatic. But I wouldn't deny that I don't spend an awful lot of time worrying about the next book I want to read. I had read a blog post a few days back (sorry I couldn't find it for you) where it said that you could make these small chits with the names of books you want to read next, and when you finish one, you simply pick up another and whatever the chit says, you read that book. This makes it a lot easier and cuts the agony we have to face every time. There was this Facebook post that sugge...

A moment ago, I was checking my diary in which I keep my transactions recorded- something I have been doing for quite a long time now. The diary has transactions of the past few years stored in it, filled in with black, blue and green pens. I don't know why, but I decided to check the past transactions, and what I saw almost brought me on the verge of tears. I still remember the day when mom declared that we would be getting pocket-money from the next month, and the amount was lucrative too. 1,000 taka was really a lot for us at that age. We were only leaving school then. Although kids of that age pretty much lay hands on more money, we never saw the face of those fresh notes before that age. If we needed something, anything , we would only name it, and dad would bring those to us in next to no time. It was that simple, and we never had to ask for money! I don't smoke or do drugs, and nor does my brother. Hence everything we ever did was acceptable to our ever-affectionate ...

My life has changed a lot in the past two days, and I have turned from being a full-time student to a full time student with a part time job! I simply couldn't fathom the burning passion in my heart for writing, and decided to turn it into the reason of my being on this planet. So without actually considering what I might be signing up for, I went for a written exam for an IT solution company who were apparently looking for someone who could write good articles. Articles, I thought, who doesn't know how to write them, right? A short, HD video clip started playing inside my head and I visualized the weekly magazines that I devour so fervently, and jumped into the thing without thinking for a second time. The exam went well: I was surrounded by students from English medium and I had almost lost hope that I would ever make it. But then right after a few days: DING! My email alerted me that I had indeed, gotten a message from the hiring manager. I was instantly on cloud nin...

My phone was stolen yesterday! :( You must be thinking, "What's so earth-shattering about this incident? It keeps happening to many people everyday!" But think again. If this incident has not happened to you ever, you do not know how helpless we feel when we turn the back-pocket of our handbags to find the zip opened and the content vanished! It was another busy day and I was waiting for a bus at Malibag. The bus came, and I rushed with mom and other people to catch it (a very common sight in our country. Forming a queue is kind of a crime here!). There was a huge crowd gathered in front of the bus and we tried our way in. Behind my mom was a woman, the type that lives in slums-with dirty and tattered sari wrapped up around her body and a child held on her hip. She had another small kid of around seven to nine years old, not a day more than that! She was asking mom to let her through, and the nine-year-old was right behind me! Who would suspect an innocent child for ...