My experience with Painting...

Coming from a family of artists, I've always dreamt of being one since I was a child. I was above average as a kid in my art skills and managed to win a prize or two in art competitions. However I was more studious and ambitious than artistic I guess and growing up art went from being a passion, to seldom thought of hobby to finally a 'had been hobby'. 

Moving to Toronto and being jobless reminded me of my childhood passion and I decided to take up an oil painting class. During this course, I came across some surprises about myself and about painting that somewhat changed my cherry-eyed image of the subject. I realised, I was a very impatient person and oil painting demanded more than average patience; you've got to wait till layers and layers of paint dry out, so you can apply the new layer. It required attention to detail, another quality I'm happier living without - you need to look the the minute details of lights, shadows and shades to get the 'real look'. It required following rules! Yes, art of all the things, I thought artists were all about breaking rules and being free and crazy but that's definitely not the approach to a good painting. You've got to follow the rules of proportion, of colour mixing of spacing and much more. I realised art is also very technical. But most of all what surprised me is the kind of 'undivided attention' a painting demands. If you really want to paint, you need block yourself out from the rest of the world and life around you, doing it at home doesn't work because the kitchen or the mess in the living room or the emails keep distracting me. Unless I go to my studio, I cannot block myself out to give undivided attention to the painting. Once you're alone with your painting, it is a lot of fun and you can be there for 3 hours, feeling like they were just 3 minutes. 

I just had my last class yesterday and I learnt a good deal about art theory, different artists, different techniques of painting. I liked the pallet knife technique the most; I think I like this technique because it is more forgiving, you can mix colours and give a rough touch which still looks interesting and neat in its own way. It saves you picking different size brushes or cleaning your brushes again and again when you switch from one colour to another. Guess I'm a short-cut artist. No wonder I was always more drawn towards abstract painting. 

P.S: Yes, those are from my course work, attempts of re-producing Van Gogh and Tom Thompson. Glad they are not alive to see these! 

Toronto Diaries: An Organic Experience!

I happened to visit the Whole Foods grocery outlet for the first time yesterday. I did expect it to have a good range of organic and wholesome food offerings, but what came to me as a 'marketer's delight' was the way Whole Foods has built it's entire shopping experience around its core proposition of 'health via organic living'. 

First of all the grocery store has a very neat, clean and up-class environment to it (as you can see in the picture, it looks more like a cafe than a grocery store). You know that feeling you have when you think of your grocery list? Well you enter this store and you forget that dull feeling, in fact you will feel like you do when you're shopping for your favourite shoes or clothes - that's how pleasant the outlay and environment is. 

You think its a grocery store, but it's more than that. They also have hand made organic material gift section, natural ingredient cosmetics and more than that, they have a health bar - which includes an amazing Salad bar and an international cuisine bar. On the salad bar the board says 'Your Healthy Living Starts Here' 

On Saturday's the store invites you for their 'all you can eat healthy breakfast' - so you can make your Weekend grocery shopping trip a family breakfast time too! Something quite valuable to the busy working lifestyle here. It's also a great way to make your customers more 'organic loyal' by offering opportunities for them to taste and enjoy healthy eating. 

The store has an amazingly aesthetic display for each food section, be it cheese, bakery or sea food! They also have free sampling of their latest bakery or cuisine recipes. 

Another small but impressive difference was that all price tags were 'electronic'. How smart is that! Canadians would know how often stores have deals and sales on here - imagine how much paper and printing is wasted in changing prices over and over again! This is a truly  a 'green' initiative. As I said, I get excited by such things also as a marketer, because I can imagine how easily a brand could keep a check on their displayed prices at Whole Foods using their electronic pricing. I've seen the examples where brands lose out on sales because of mis-pricing by the merchandiser and it only gets detected after the loss has materialised - how often can you go to a store to physically check on each and every price in the aisle? 

When we talk about next generation shopper experience, Whole Foods is definitely one of the retailers bringing a step change! They stand for 'organic' in each and every way they sell their merchandise. Organic food is usually considered expensive to buy but if it is offered wrapped in a value added experience, I can imagine a lot of people feeling happier to invest in healthier food! 

Next weekend if you feel like breakfasting out of home and also have a boring grocery list - Whole Foods is your destination! 

Toronto Diaries - Home Shopping

If you're new to Toronto and looking around for some good ideas for home shoppping, well here's a tip list from my very fresh and recent experience: 

1. The main places for furniture shopping are IKEA, Leons, Bricks and Ashleys. IKEA is perceived to be cheaper and good for quick and practical home set ups, but beware - IKEA with its flimsy finish and quality is usually more pricey than Leons and Bricks - we experienced this mainly when comparing beds and dining tables.

So if you have kids, go ahead with ikea furniture for their bedrooms but for your lounge and master bedrooms, it might be a better idea to check out Leons, Bricks etc. Ashleys is really good too but on the pricier side.

Leons and Bricks seem to have either the same or extremely similar suppliers, because you find the same designs in both places. Leons offers free home delivery  for any thing over USD400 whereas Bricks charges about USD 50 for delivery, no matter how expensive. They usually have great deals on in some seasons so its a good idea to only buy during deals - its definitely worth the wait. If you however you buy something off deal and its put on deal within 30 days of your purchase, you can claim for a refund of the extra amount and they will cater to it.  For that you need to keep an eye on their prices even after you've bought your furniture!

2. So once you're done with the big furniture, you're probably thinking curtains and blinds now. This is a tough one,especially if you've seen better things back home (and especially if your home was Pakistan or India, where beautiful and customised curtains are made at amazingly low prices as compared to the dollar prices you see here). So my first suggestion is, if you can get your drapes made custom made back home (incase you have an excellent cousin, sister or friend who can do that for you and ship them across, or you happen to be going back for a holiday soon - that should be your first option). Because good drapes are found few here. The ones that are even close to good are extremely expensive.

If however you just need very plain, no frills, simple drapes - I'd suggest you get them at Walmart (starting at 20 dollars). If you'd like to get slightly classier ones, then you can get them at Home Outfitters or Sears(starting at 40 dollars) 

If you're going for blinds, then IKEA or Blinds to go - are good options. Blinds are relatively easier to find and cheaper than curtains.

3. Ok drapes done too. What's next? I guess Kitchen and Crockery. Here you won't have trouble looking for options, starting at Walmart and going up to the classiest stores - you'll find good crockery and cooking ware, all price ranges and qualities. My favourite are:

 - Corelle
 - Benix 
 - Home Outfitters

4. Ok done with all the necessary stuff? Now comes the fun part - Home Decor.  Here again you'll find many options but what you must check on your shopping trip are:

- Home Sense
- Home Outfitters
- Pier One (on the expensive side)
- Bouclair (on the expensive side)
- Do NOT shop at IKEA for decor before checking the above out, chances are you're going to regret!

5. Now you're wondering, that's a bunch load of places to visit. So let me give you some good news. There is an outlet store area where you can find almost all of the above stores. This shoppers' heaven is called 'HeartLand' - your ultimate destination for cheaper prices on ALL brands - home or clothing or accessories.

Good Luck Shopping & Settling in :) 

Toronto Diaries - Arts & Culture

I'm going to start a series of posts titled 'Toronto Diaries' which will talk about my experiences in this new city. It seems like 'Google' isn't always a great help when you're searching for the right stuff in a new city. What helps more is word of mouth and that's also hard to find in a city you're new to. 

So I'm hoping information in my posts would help anyone who's new to Toronto (or Mississauga) and for the rest, perhaps you can just enjoy the read !

Well if you're new in Mississauga and do not want to travel to downtown very often for something artsy - whether its an art class, theater show, musical or concerts, one place you'd like to keep a tap on is 'Living Arts Centre'.  Living Arts is conveniently located in the center of the city of Mississauga, very close to the shopping mall 'Square One'   Living Arts is an amazing place where cultural, community and art activities taking place all year round. Currently they are holding a range of workshops and courses including, Theater Classes, Pottery, Hot Glass Sculpting, Wood Sculpting, Oil Painting, Drawing, Dance and Creative Writing. 

They have exclusive studios for each of these courses; the studios are fully equipped with all kinds of tools and machinery required for the craft. Class sizes are usually small (12-15 persons) so individual attention is given to each learner. All class times and fees can be found on their website! I'm attending the oil painting class and loving it so far!  Living Arts also stages musicals, so Mama Mia is coming up in November. Recently they staged an amateur theater, Anarkali - so you can expect ethnic performances as well. Last month one evening was dedicated to Mehdi Hassan, where one of his trained pupils from Pakistan performed Mehdi Hasan's popular ghazal songs. 

Another place you might like to check out for Art courses is Visual Arts Mississauga; they have a similar course offering and slightly less expensive fee structure. 

How to Increase Blog Traffic - Guest Post | Pakistani Bloggers

How to Increase Blog Traffic - Guest Post | Pakistani Bloggers

Morning Shows or Naach Gaana?

Turn on GEO or ARY at 9am in the morning and you see a pastry face woman glad in a perfect wedding attire, dancing, singing and doing crazy things. That's definitely not what I like to wake up to! Many years ago, morning shows used to be informative, decent, inspiring, and an interesting start to your day. Recently however they have become one hour long fillers for lack of quality entertainment. The host is more concerned about what what she thinks, how she looks, how she dances, than about the views of the guest invited to the show. The guest is forced to dance and act crazy like the host on an indian song. After a lot of haahaa, hee hee, hoo hoo - the show ends adding no value to the audience.  

It just leaves me bewildered that Pakistani show presenters have no talent at all - even the singing and dancing is not worth seeing and hearing (I'd rather sing in the bathroom myself than hear them). Is there no criteria for hiring these plastic women? Is there no training provided on what a morning show format should look like? Operah Winfrey has been a legendary talk show host and I hardly saw her getting up to sing and dance on her own show! It was all about the guest, about their life and about experiences. Although that isn't what a morning show can be compared to, but that definitely is the kind of show any talk show in general can be inspired from. Even the Sahir Show (failed imitation of Shahrukh Khan and Koffee with Karan) isn't any different from his sister's (Shaista Wahidi) morning show. I watched the show yesterday and almost half the show time was spent in Sahir trying to show off how well he can sing (which he was quite average at) , when the guest was a well known singer! Imagine that - trying to show off your pathetic singing skills before a professional pop star! The rest of the show was about dancing on a famous Amitabh Bachan song and the little talk on the show was also about 'how many Bollywood stars had the guest met in on his visit to India and what they said to him etc.' - how complexed are we? 

Confessions of a Confused Patriot

Scientists once conducted an experiment: They put a frog in a tub of water that had a burner underneath. Gradually they kept increasing the heat by fraction of a degree everyday. Every day the frog's body adapted to the increased temperature. They still kept on increasing the temperature up to a point where normally a frog would jump out of the water not bearing the heat, but because it was done little by little everyday, the frog did not feel the difference and its body kept adapting.

Then one day the frog died. 

It died because it should have died in the first place. It died because if you had put a frog into this temperature out of fresh air, it would have jumped out in the first place. 

This one did not act immediately, but died eventually - like the people of Pakistan, because the burner was raised so gradually that we learnt to live with burners like bomb blasts like we drink tea everyday."

Since childhood I have been a true patriot, always very passionate about my homeland, its economic and political situation and with undying urge to serve my country. Then something happened - I moved out of Pakistan for work and spent almost 4 years out of the country. Also, I left at a very crucial time, before the fall of the Musharraf military rule, before the Lal Masjid operation, before the Judiciary strike, before the Benazir killing, before Mr. 200% percent (the most hated man in Pakistan right now, Asif Ali Zardari) came to power, before power shutdowns became a nightmare, before the floods happened - I left at a time when Musharraf was still considered to be doing better than most other governments before. I visited often but that did not spoil my cherry-eyed image of my country. It was not until 2011 when I moved back to Pakistan, that I realised how much this country had deteriorated over the past few years. I had heard about it, but I had not believed it until I saw it for myself. The divide in the rich and the poor is at its worse, the common man is at his worst economically, socially and medically. The recent floods have brought so much more contamination to the country, there are more people dying of Dengue right now than of chronic illnesses.  

However, been born in raised in Pakistan, and being from the fortunate 10% who can still manage to afford generators, sweet water tankers and petrol at the sky rocket prices,  I managed to settle back in. But I did forget, although I was lucky enough to provide basic needs and basic entertainment for myself in Pakistan - I could not imagine to feel as liberated, as care free and find opportunities as easily as I could while living abroad. But this part of the equation only hit me when I moved out again (just last month) and came to Toronto. Landing in Toronto, I saw such amazing social infrastructure, offering such easy access to learning, training, entertainment and that too without any security or social threat - that it almost felt like I was breathing again! There are free libraries and community workshops, there is free assistance in language training and job hunting for new immigrants; one can walk out of their home anytime, without having to worry if your clothes look great (referring to the condition of the Pakistani elite right now), or that the neighbour's security guard is going to stare at you as if he had encountered a rare species. 

Its sad, and I confess, I am not the frog that was in the pond, I am the frog outside the pond that jumped in, felt the heat and jumped back out again!

As a native, I am still all for doing something to improve the situation for Pakistan, but I don't think I can be happier just living there as a dormant part of the problem.




P.S: While I confess the above, I still stand by the firm belief that Pakistan is a young country with problems of its age and additional problems due to constant international interference and dependence. I still believe that terrorism is not a problem we invented for ourselves but a problem that was shoved onto us for 'someone elses' global agenda (call me a conspiracy theorists but conspiracies are an exaggerated version of some lurking truth underneath). I still believe that media does blow Pakistan out of proportion, not because they show the bomb blasts that rightly take place in the country, but because they fail to show what 'else' (good) happens with our budding youth. (Reference to my earlier post: Re-Launching Brand Pakistan)