Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Hawking Weighs in on British-Pakistani Singer Zayn Javed Malik

“My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay close attention to the study of theoretical physics. Because one day there may well be proof of multiple universes. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another different universe. And in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction.”  British Physicist Stephen Hawking

Zayn Javed Malik
While Stephen Hawking was  recently speaking to an Australian audience about black holes, cosmos, religion and the future of humanity, a girl asked him: "What do you think is the cosmological effect of Zayn leaving One Direction and consequently breaking the hearts of millions of teenage girls across the world?”

Responding to the question,  Hawking first said, "Finally, a question about something important", and then he added: "My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay close attention to the study of theoretical physics. Because one day there may well be proof of multiple universes. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another different universe. And in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction."

Ever since the British-Pakistani singer Zayn Javed Malik decided to quit the band "One Direction",  his fans around the world have been heart-broken. There have been tears. Adding to their heartbreak, Malik does not seem like he will change his mind anytime soon, according to the National Public Radio (NPR).

NPR ended the segment by playing Zayn's popular song: "Baby, you light up my world like nobody else. The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed. But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell".  Another popular song "“Don’t forget where you belong” by Zayn  is seen by his Pakistani fans as a nod to his Pakistani heritage. Express Tribune, a  Karachi newspaper, reports a Zayn sighting in Pakistan after he left One Direction.

Zayn had said  earlier that his surprise visit to Pakistan would be a month-long trip taking him to Karachi, Lahore and parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. “It’s time I went back to my roots and take a break from life in the limelight,” said the 22-year-old in an interview.

Here's Zayn Malik singing "Don't Forget Where You Belong":

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x27xwpp_one-direction-don-t-forget-where-you-belong-audio_music


One Direction - Don't Forget Where You Belong... by _Channel_

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6 comments:

Riaz Haq said...

Men from #Pakistan third sexiest in the world after men from #Ireland and #Australia

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/04/worlds-sexiest-people-armenians-irish_n_7205740.html?utm_campaign=naytev&utm_content=55498aede4b01bca5246942f … via @HPLifestyle

The sexiest nationalities for men:

10. Spanish
9. Danish
8. Nigerian
7. Italian
6. Scottish
5. English
4. American
3. Pakistani
2. Australian
1. Irish

The sexiest nationalities for women:

10. Lebanese
9. Bulgarian
8. Filipina
7. Brazilian
6. Australian
5. English
4. Colombian
3. American
2. Barbadian/Bajan
1. Armenian

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/04/worlds-sexiest-people-armenians-irish_n_7205740.html

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistanis hotter than Indians, Buzzfeed India editor says

As Sunday’s Pakistan-India world cup match was drawing to a close, something other than Misbah-ul-Haq’s valiant effort to save face was causing a stir on Twitter.

It all began when Rega Jha, Buzzfeed India’s 23-year-old editor, tweeted: “It's so sad that no matter who wins, Pakistanis will continue to be way hotter than us and we'll continue to be their ugly neighbours.”:

http://www.dawn.com/news/1163968

Riaz Haq said...

Humza Arshad, #British #Pakistani Comedian, Takes On Jihadists

http://nyti.ms/1Bf7rUl


LONDON — HUMZA ARSHAD pokes fun at Pakistani accents and emotional soccer fans. He jokes about his weight, his voice and his own mother. But mostly, he laughs at jihadists.

“Have you noticed how in those terrorist videos they’re always sitting on the floor?” Mr. Arshad asked a group of high school students the other day. “What’s up with that? I swear they can afford a chair.”

And their pants: “Always coming up to here,” he said, pointing at his shin, “like, did you borrow this from your little brother or something?”


Mr. Arshad, 29, is no ordinary comedian. A practicing Muslim in hip-hop gear whose YouTube videos have drawn millions of views, he is the centerpiece of the British government’s latest and perhaps cleverest effort to prevent students from running off to Syria and joining the Islamic State. Since March, Mr. Arshad has been on tour with the counterterrorism unit of the Metropolitan Police. They have already taken their double act (“Ten percent message, 90 percent comedy”) to more than 20,000 students in 60 high schools across London.

Now Mr. Arshad, who says he first discovered stand-up as a 10-year-old watching American shows like “Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam,” hopes to take his act across the Atlantic: At the end of the month he is headed to New York and Los Angeles to meet with Hollywood studios and television networks — and hold exploratory talks with American schools on his counterextremism work.

About 700 British Muslims have traveled to Syria, including dozens of minors. Schools here have been on high alert especially since February, when three teenage girls left their family homes in east London. The footage of them calmly passing airport security has become emblematic of the youthful following faraway militants have established in the West — often using the same social media that has given Mr. Arshad his fan base.

He knows the brother of one of the girls well.

“I wish I could have prevented my friend’s sister from going,” he told the packed auditorium at a west London high school that recent afternoon. It was one of the rare serious moments in a 45-minute stand-up show that mostly saw him mocking converts with “beards to their belly buttons,” terrorists with dry ankles (“from all that sitting on the floor”) and — affectionately — his own mother, a Muslim who came to Britain from rural Pakistan and wears a head scarf. (“Is she really as bad as you say on YouTube?” one student asked. “No,” Mr. Arshad replied. “Much worse.”)

“Listen, I’m here for two reasons,” he said. “No. 1, I’m a British citizen, and I’m proud of where I’m from. No. 2, I don’t want people losing their lives. That’s not what Islam is about.”

“But there are some misguided individuals who are giving us a bad name,” he said. “We all have to do our part.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/22/world/europe/a-british-comedian-takes-on-jihadists.html?_r=0

Riaz Haq said...

#British #Pakistani singer Zayn Malik makes album chart history with first solo #Brit debut album to hit number 1 http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/78543729/Zayn-Malik-makes-album-chart-history …

Zayn Malik has made US chart history by becoming the first solo Brit to hit No.1 with a debut album.

The former One Direction star's Mind of Mine has hit the top spot on the Billboard 200 albums countdown with sales of 157,000.

He also becomes the first male UK artist to reach number one with their first album since George Michael climbed to the top with Faith almost 30 years ago.

Malik is also the first UK act to debut at No.1 with their first album since One Direction managed the feat with Up All Night in 2012.

He's the first British act to hit the top of the Billboard 200 and the Official UK Albums Chart with a debut since Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream in 2009.

In addition Malik's album also landed the top spot on Australia's ARIA Chart.

Riaz Haq said...


#Pakistani-#Canadian female punk rocker Urva Khan to perform in #Karachi #Pakistan this month

https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/lifestyle/mark-the-day-pakistani-canadian-rocker-will-be-performing-in-karachi-this-january/

Urvah Khan is ready to take over Karachi’s rock and roll scene with her music and her unique appearance!

Bearing a look which is very unconventional for a Pakistani woman, she dons a mohawk, tattoos and piercings effortlessly.

Urvah’s music style is inspired by the East and West both, according to the band.

According to latest news, Urvah is all set to take over Karachi with her band.

Khan has been trying to re-discover Pakistan and get in touch with her roots since she came here, as she had moved to Canada at a very young age. Gathering like-minded musicians to start a band in the country, she secured three musicians for her debut performance in Pakistan.

Riaz Haq said...

Ali Ahmed Aslam, 77, Credited With Inventing Chicken Tikka Masala, Dies
A Glasgow restaurateur, he was part of the rise of the British curry house — and played an essential part in its story.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/dining/ali-ahmed-aslam-dead.html

Ali Ahmed Aslam, the Glasgow restaurateur who was often credited with the invention of chicken tikka masala, died on Monday. He was 77.

His son Asif Ali said the cause was septic shock and organ failure after a prolonged illness. He did not say where Mr. Aslam died.

Much like Cartesian geometry, chicken tikka masala was most likely not one person’s invention, but rather a case of simultaneous discovery — a delicious inevitability in so many restaurant kitchens, advanced by shifting forces of immigration and tastes in postwar Britain.

Many cooks claimed that they were the ones who served it first, or that they knew a guy who knew the guy who really did. Others insisted it wasn’t a British invention at all but a Punjabi dish. None of those stories seemed to stick.

Instead, the bright tomato-tinted lights of fame shone on one man: Mr. Aslam, who immigrated to Glasgow from a village outside Lahore, Pakistan, when he was 16, and who opened the restaurant Shish Mahal in 1964.

What seems to have established Mr. Aslam as the inventor of the dish was an unsuccessful 2009 bid by the Scottish member of Parliament Mohammad Sarwar to have the European Union recognize chicken tikka masala as a Glaswegian specialty. In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Mr. Aslam explained that he had added some sauce to please a customer once, and you could almost hear him shrug.

In Aslam family lore, it was a local bus driver who popped in for dinner and suggested that plain chicken tikka was too spicy for him, and too dry — and also he wasn’t feeling well, so wasn’t there something sweeter and saucier that he could have instead? Sure, why not. Mr. Aslam, who was known as Mr. Ali, tipped the tandoor-grilled pieces of meat into a pan with a quick tomato sauce and returned them to the table.

“He never really put so much importance on it,” Asif Ali said. “He just told people how he made it.”

Chicken tikka masala became so widespread that in 2001 Robin Cook, the British foreign secretary, delivered a speech praising the dish — and Britain for embracing it.

“Chicken tikka masala is now a true British national dish,” Mr. Cook said, referring to a survey that had placed it above fish and chips in popularity. “Not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences.”

Mr. Aslam was born into a family of farmers, in a small village near Lahore. As a teenager, newly arrived to Glasgow in 1959, he took a job with his uncle in the clothing business during the day and cut onions at a local restaurant at night.

Mr. Aslam was ambitious, and he soon opened his own place in the city’s West End. He installed just a few tables and a brilliantly hot well of a tandoor oven, which he learned to man in a sweaty process of trial and error. He brought his parents over from Pakistan; his mother helped to run the kitchen, and his father took care of the front of the house.

In 1969, Mr. Aslam married Kalsoom Akhtar, who came from the same village in Pakistan. In Glasgow they raised five children. In addition to his son Asif, his survivors include his wife; their other children, Shaista Ali-Sattar, Rashaid Ali, Omar Ali and Samiya Ali; his brother Nasim Ahmed; and his sisters Bashiran Bibi and Naziran Tariq Ali.

Chicken tikka masala boomed in the curry houses of 1970s Britain. Soon it was more than just a dish you could order off the menu at every curry house, or buy packaged at the supermarket; it was a powerful political symbol.