Hobbies for the retired

Although hobbies are not restricted to the age of the hobbyists, as many have been seen still going for trekking or hiking on most rough terrain even in their 60s and 70s, but age does have an effect on the type of hobbies one should opt for when one is retired, say at the age of 60 and beyond.

First of all remember that after an active professional life, suddenly confining yourself to a rocking chair will rob you of your remaining energies in days and make you lethargic, bored, depressed and feeling low most of the time. So the first thing to remember is that replace your official routine with a physical outdoor activity which would make you alert, active and focused on your life.  Here is a choice for such hobbies that would make you physically committed and make you active and still going strong:

• Fishing
• Camping
• Hunting

For those who for some reasons cannot opt for very active outdoors, there is a choice of hobbies that are less strenuous and laborious, but still keep you physically engaged, like:

• Gardening
• Bird watching
• Jogging or even strolling
• Volunteering for community programmes
• Swimming
• Photography

There are many who miss that company of colleagues they had around them when working and still like a few friends around to spend some time together, playing and gossiping.

• Sky gazing
• Reading (Joining a library/book club)
• Playing indoor games with friend (Bridge, Poker or other card games)
• Writing
• Blogging
• Listening to music
• Sports programmes on TV
• Embroidery / knitting for women
• Making scrapbooks

These are just some of the many hobbies for people less active and retired from their jobs. All listed hobbies provide a meaningful direction to one’s “new” life and provide a cause or a effective pastime to keep oneself busy and still productive and useful. Don’t blanket yourself with depression or seclude yourself in dimly lit room as if the life has come to an end. Live each day as a new day that adds to your activities besides physical and mental fitness.

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Hunting – an exciting but controversial outdoor hobby

Hunting, like many other outdoor hobbies, is one of the most liked hobbies around the world. Hunting started as a means of living when the first human on earth threw a stone on an animal to eat its meat and use its coat as part of his cloak. Even when other means of catching animal for eating became common, hunting as a passion continued since time immemorial and continues even now. There are many views on hunting as some consider it unethical to kill animals for fun sake and is even considered as crime in some countries. The hunting hurts when the hunters hunt nearly extinct species of animals and birds despite strict prohibition of their hunt.

The real fun of hunting is to enjoy the nature form very close quarters and watch animals and birds in their natural habitat. Besides it is good physical exercise and perfects one’s aim and coordination. Hunting includes animal hunting, like the deer and elk hunting and bird hunting like partridges, turkey, bustards and other fowl.

Hunting is done using many means like guns, arrows and even by specially trained dogs and birds like falcons. The lords and dignitaries are often seen in films running after their hunt with hounds or drum beaters trying to encircle a lion and ultimately killing the beast when adequately cornered. There are stories of hunting lions by kings and emperors while sitting on elephants in India and other countries. One often comes across hunters posing with a hunted lion or a cheetah with one foot resting on the dead animal.

Hunting as a fun should be taken while reaming under some hunting ethics. It is considered inappropriate to kill female animals. It is also unethical and even unlawful to kill animals like rhinos and elephants for their horns and tusks, or zebras and tigers for their coats. This kind of hunting is called poaching and is strongly disliked and prohibited all over the world. Many beautiful animals have become extinct due to excessive hunting like the brown bears of Deosai, Markhor and Marco-polo sheep and blind dolphin and Houbara Bustards in Pakistan

So if you decide to take up hunting as a hobby or already a hunter, ensure you hunt while  remaining within the ethics of hunting and do not transgress.

Related reading: 

Fauna and endangered wildlife of Pakistan

Deosai Plains and its extinct brown bears

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Hobby Types – Travelling

Hobbies are adopted as pastimes, sources of relaxation, education, information and enlarging one’s vision and horizon.  And there is one hobby that encompasses all in one – Travelling. Yes, travelling takes a person from one land to another, see and explore new worlds and places, meet people, see their culture, eat new foods, find new resorts to fish and climb mountains, learn ski on snow covered slopes as the person’s country may not have snow clad mountains at all. According to Samuel Johnson, “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are."

When travelling one gets to know history – rather I would put it this way that one walks through history when visiting ancient remains, fortifications, castles in Rome and Greece. For those who also love art, find great artwork of Michael Angelo in Florence, Italy. Those interested in collecting antiques, coins and other valuables find time to attend auctions in Paris and England and get to see some of the rare collections.

Though expensive, it is all in one hobby that also satisfies one’s intellectual and sensuous cravings.  Those who are good writers pen down their travel experiences and provide a good reading source for those whose best pastime is book reading.  An observant traveler and writers can take the reader of his travelogue actually to the place and the readers feel as if they are there with the writers climbing rusty stairs of a castle or feeling the fresh odour of the Alpine mountains or the aroma of Chalo Kebab in the streets of Tehran. Or when may visit the Kim’s Gun on The Mall, Lahore where the famous British writer Rudyard Kipling sat by the gun in defiance to the rules of the municipality and wrote some of his great travelogues and stories. Or one may lean with the leaning tower of Pisa and get oneself photographed.

A traveler comes to know the heritage of a place and that of older civilizations still reflective from the ruins of a place. Coupled with listening to the locals, the anecdotes allow better understanding of history, people and aspirations. Needless to say understanding human nature is, perhaps, the best part of education. 

Travelling is all fun and more so a stress buster. When travelling distant lands and meeting new people, one forgets about one’s stressful life back home and is fully absorbed in one’s ongoing new experience of a place. Listening to the music by a local group on a roadside café can be amusing. And then if you have a camera by your side, you can preserve your moments and satisfy your hobby of photography and share later with your folks once back home.

A traveler is free as long as he travels – free from stress of the work and problems of daily household. This feeling of being free makes one afloat and lighter in time and space. The hobby of travelling is a hobby of enduring the beauty of God's creativity and skill fullness. If you haven’t thought of travelling, other than your official routine, then take a break today and plan on a small trip to a nearby country or even another city in your own country you haven’t visited before. You will feel lighter and happy. 

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Gaming as a hobby

When talking of hobbies, generally one considers collecting various objects, fishing, mountaineering, sky gazing and cooking as hobbies. But recently there has been an increasing trend of playing online games on internet among young people. And I asked myself, “Should gaming be considered as a hobby too?” Well to substantiate my query, I asked my son who is an avid gamer and his straight reply was, “Why not?” He continued further, “Besides providing me and my friend a good pastime, which is why one opt to have a hobby, it also improves social communications and team management skills.”

And I wondered how right he was. Times have changed since the days when I collected stamps because there was no internet in those days. Life was simple and innocent. Now the life of every young man revolves around a laptop both for his professional pursuits and pastime leisure. So obviously online gaming comes handy in free time to pass it leisurely and to one’s satisfaction. That’s what hobbies do.

From playing packman of the earlier gaming days to much more sophisticated, mindboggling games like the World of Warcraft and like, the technology has gone a long way in keeping the pace with the advancements taking place all over the world. It is the same difference between watching Goofy, Mickey Mouse or Tom and Jerry of yesteryears to Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Transformers, He-Man and his Masters, Scooby Doo and may others of present times.

And like watching cartoons, gaming is not only children’s’ domain, as many older people find it a good pastime too. I once read a remark by a 42 years old who while commenting on post about playing on line games and video games wrote, “ I am 42 yrs old and love video games. It is a great stress reliever for me. Most of the people I know my age play video games.” A young man writes about his father, “My dad's 50 and he's a freaking expert on Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube. He beat it in 2 hours and 51 minutes I think. He's unlocked everything. Ha-ha. It's awesome.”

Well unlike video games, the online gaming is free, challenging and involving live participants to play with. This allows stretching capabilities of one’s mid to its limits to win over from an equally enthusiast and determined player or a set of players. It really helps in maturing the thinking abilities of a gamer, besides being an excellent pastime.

We will talk more of gaming, in time.

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Art Collecting as a Hobby

There is no limit to collecting things as a hobby. I have talked of many types of objects that people collect as a hobby, today it is the art in any form that attracts people and ultimately becomes their passion and favourite hobby. There are no bounds that would restrict the definition of art. It may range from sculptures, paintings, painted mugs and even rare artifacts.   

Art collecting may start from small things, but as one matures in collecting artwork in all its forms, it rather starts to become expensive. We often watch auctions of rare paintings that end up in millions of dollars. It is for the reason that art lovers over a period of time become obsessed with their prized possessions and would want to add more rare, unique and of course expensive artwork to their collection.

The art collectors can do the collecting in many ways, like restricting them to a certain period of history, artist, type of paintings, sculptures or whatever they intend collecting. Some even collect broaches and cigarette lighters with an artistic design.  

One thing that is peculiar to art collectors is their never ending quest to dig in and find unique things possessed by no one else before. It is the thrill and sort of adventurism attached to the hobby that makes it one of the most expensive hobbies. Collectors travel long distance, other continents and countries to find what they are looking for to enlarge their collection. When talking of art many big names of artists and their paintings are taken. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Liza being the world famous. Then there are painters like Michael Angelo, Von Gough, Picasso and many more. Talking of Pakistan, names like Chughtai, Sadequain, Ustad Allah Bux, Gulgee and lot others make headlines. We will talk about all these great men in time.

But one has to be really knowledgeable when taking up art as a hobby as there are fakes that can only be detected by the experts. New collectors often buy fakes and wouldn’t know that they are being fleeced. An Australian couple was jailed for nine months in 2007 after forging works by aboriginal artist Rover Thomas, four of which sold for over $307,000 through auction houses including Sotheby's and Christie's. Geert Jan Jensen has been called by the French police, the most sophisticated and prolific master forger that ever lived. He had over 12 million in Swiss bank accounts and 3 false identities. Not clever enough though as Dutch painter Karel Appel recognized one of Jansen's forgeries as his own work. When police investigated the farm where Jansen has his studio, they found 1600 forged paintings, including works purportedly by Cocteau, Dufy, Ferdinand Erfman, Charles Eyck, Leo Gestel, Bart van der Leck, Matisse, Miro and the most popular target of all, Picasso. Jansen was sentenced to one-year imprisonment and five additional years suspended sentence. I am amazed at the rather shorter sentences these faker get.

Anyway, as I progress in my blog, I will collect more information on the actual artwork and the fakes that create ripples among the collectors. But then wouldn’t fakes create a thrill?  

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Type of Hobbies - Gadgets

Gadgets of any type are the new trends in hobbies, especially among the young people. Gone are the days when children innocently collected stamps or match boxes or even buttons. Children today watch Search and destroy type cartoons more than Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse. The intensive use of technology and gadget driven machines and weapons attract children more than those oldies like Tom and Jerry or Woody wood Pecker.

Children and young men enjoy remote control toys, guns, boats and aero planes that provide thrill and realism in outdoor hobbies. Even competitions are held at various levels where young people demonstrate their flying and driving skills. Some even go the extent of first assembling the kits available in varying forms before really putting them to test.

Besides, in daily life, the cellular phones, TV remotes, i-Phones and Kindle laced with sophisticated software are the emerging trends in hobbies and pastimes of the younger generation. Without these gadgets, one seems to be totally lost and helpless. The excessive use of cellular phones in messaging (SMS) and using these as mini computers is the hobbyists’ best pastime toy.

Since this gadget driven life is preferred and loved by a vast majority, we will also include the love of gadgets as a hobby and talk more about the new trends and latest developments in days to come.

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The Love of Gadgets

There were times, perhaps the good old times, when one would walk over to a TV set and switch it on or off or change channels. But those were very old times as today technology has taken over so much control over our lives that without a gadget in our hand, we feel abandoned, lonely and perhaps helpless too. Doing things manually seems like a nightmare and if one doesn’t find the TV remote, one almost gets knocked down. This is a reality and the world of gadgets that rule us in almost every field.

Charlie Booker writes in Guardian, “I love complex gadgets. What I cant stand are idiots who don’t know which buttons to press. TV remotes should have more stuff on them: dials and joysticks and flashing lights. I dream of a remote with its own mouse. And I don’t need a manual”

The advancement in the cellular telephones is one example which is making the younger generation crazy and wanting. No sooner a new mobile phone is introduced the older one is straightaway discarded. It seems we have become attached to the software behind each gadget so much that everyone want to have the latest and the best. . "I doubt that people really loved their cell phones," said Don Norman, a principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, a design firm, and author of "Living With Complexity." The software inside a Smartphone changed that. He thinks people merely like their Amazon Kindle e-readers, but don't love them because the software doesn't function as an auxiliary brain.

Thus it is the love of the gadgets and the software that has taken over all other hobbies of yester years. The outdated hobbies of philately, Phillumeny or collecting coins are no more talked off and if someone does, he is taken a person from the past, not even of present. The hobby of gadgets is in and is getting complicated every day that passes. People today feel lost or actually grieve when they lose a personal electronic device. "You are leaving your brain behind," said Mark Rolston, the chief creative officer at Frog Design, a leading product design shop.

So we are adding gadgets to our list of hobbies in our blog and will share the latest in gadgets which is now taking over all other forms of pastimes and hobbies.

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Hobby Types – Mountaineering

Although mountaineering is a popular sport, it is a popular hobby too. It starts from the basic hobbies like the hiking and trekking, which to me are the basic prerequisites for taking bigger leaps and adventures like mountain climbing. Mountaineering entails the stretching of one’s physical endurance to its extremes as the hobby may entail dangers at a place when one is all by oneself. It is hobby of one’s skills, determination, and endurance by using only a pair of spiked boots, a rope and a hammer to hammer nails into the mountain to make a lifeline for one self both upwards and downwards.

One can say mountaineering for people who want a extreme hobby – a hobby that involves danger, courage, hair-raising moments of one’s life and a sense of great achievement when atop the pinnacle. The hobby is extremely popular in youngsters, which then make them professional mountain climbers. And one should not be amazed to see females too into this deadly and adventurous hobby despite their relatively softer physiques. But they overcome the physical barriers by exercising hard and cling to the rope with determination and courage.

From plain and rugged mountains to icy slopes and steep vertical climbs, one has to tackle some of the most difficult terrains of the world. When going up even slip can cost one’s life or limbs. In fact beside many other factors, mountaineering is a test of one’s concentration – if the concentration is lost even for a second, the results can be disastrous and fatal.

Before undertaking mountaineering as a hobby, one must read a lot about rocks, rock formation, basics of knot fastening as a nylon rope is all that one hangs on and become the only life saving object high up there. There cannot be any short cuts as one has to have a firm grip on the rope and rope must be well fastened both to the individual and t the mountain itself.

Recently rock climbing has also become a popular hobby. The hobby starts from the indoors on a vertical artificial climb and then takes the more adventure seekers to high up on the vertical sides of the mountains. This is fascinating, awesome and very dangerously adventurous.

Pakistan is mountaineers haven – a country which has some of the most challenging mountains of the world. It has many peaks that fall in the exclusive 8,000+ meters category, like the K-2, Nanga Parbat and the Raka Poshi. Mountaineers from all over the world come to Pakistan to climb still many virgin peaks that abound in the Karakoram, the Himalayas, Hindu Kush and the Suleiman ranges. I recommend the hobbyists to meet each other in mountains of Pakistan for adventure, challenge and fun.

We will continue to talk about various aspects of mountaineering in our future posts.

Related Link: Meet me in the mountains (Pakistanpaedia)

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Hobby Types – Hiking

Those who love nature, hiking is their first choice. In fact from the love of hiking, one creates a love for mountaineering and even skiing. It is also one of the most popular outdoor hobbies around the world. Hiking does not necessarily involve climbing mountains, as some may think that way, but it is usually a strenuous walk with special hiking boots as one would often encounter rough terrain, which normal joggers cannot sustain. Normally hiking is undertaken on difficult and rough terrain to add the tinge of adventure in one’s hobby.

Hiking is often a day long strenuous physical exercise amid raw nature. Thus beside improving one’s health and physical fitness, hiking also brings one close to the nature. Hiking can also be coupled with camping, if one intends staying a night out. And when staying a night out on a beach or a lakeside, it may also trigger a love of fishing or astronomy or simply the sky gazing.

As I said before, one enjoys more if the terrain gets tougher. Therefore hikers normally choose dense jungles, forests, heavily bushed areas, semi mountainous terrain, cross country undulations or even places where one has to wade through knee deep streams. Bushwalking is walking through dense vegetation and may even require chopping tools to clear way ahead. When hiking is undertaken in mountainous terrain or highlands, it becomes trekking. A long distance trail is called thru-hiking.

Due to closeness of nature, hikers normally develop a love and affection for nature and environment. It is for this reason that avid hikers usually join hands against pollution and littering of country side and raise voice to help keep the nature and environment clean and free of pollution.

Pakistan is an ideal place for the hikers as its varying terrain. From deserts dunes to rugged and barren mountains slopes, farmlands with broken grounds, vast stretches of barren lands with no water and a soul to be seen, and of course valleys amid towering mountains. I will introduce to my readers the many hiking and trekking adventures that can be undertaken as individuals or as part of groups in my future posts.

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Hobby Types – Outdoors

While indoors hobbies like collecting stamps. coins, dolls, postcards and matchbox covers and cooking and scale modeling attract people as individuals or those not wanting to venture outside and wander into wilderness and suffer the rigours of the weather. But those who love adventure no matter how severe the weather or the terrain is, there can be no comparison in indulging into outdoor hobbies with those inside. Although some of the indoor hobbies also allow investments, outdoor hobbyists not only enjoy the nature more closely but also improve their health, physique beside attracting and making lot of like minded people and friends.

There is a long list of outdoor hobbies and some are really challenging. Bungee jumping for instance is both fun and adventure, requiring a very high standard of physical fitness and a fearless heart. For those who want to gaze far beyond the horizon into the sky above, astronomy is one of the most likeable outdoor hobbies. Coupled with camping, both hobbies provide an excellent combination of adventure and sky gazing.  The recent occurrence of the lunar eclipse attracted a large number of sky gazers around the world to spend hours in watching the moon to change its colour till it become red when fully eclipsed. Sky and bird watching also bring the hobbyists close to the nature and watch the awesome changing cloud formations and watching majestic birds flying overhead. Adding taste to camping is the love of fishing in a nearby lake. Those who go out camping, bird watching or fishing, usually take their cameras along to catch some memorable moments while adding skills and colours to their hobby of photography.

Hot air ballooning is another most favoured outdoor hobby for those who love birds and want to hover over the land and watch the world from an elevated platform. Over the years, this hobby has become an international event and hobbyists from around the world now participate in these competitions to prove their skills and satisfy their love of flying.

Mountaineering is yet another outdoor hobby which coupled with trekking, skiing and hiking makes it one of the widespread choices of hobbyists around the world. The hobby usually starts from hiking and trekking and then takes one to the cliffs and vertical climbs either for the love of skiing or the quest to conquer the virgin peaks.

The motorcycle and car racing is for those who dare to handle machines to their extreme design limits. To this drag car racing has also been added recently. Despite the hazards of the fatal-accident prone hobby, those who dare still go to test their machines and driving skills inside race tracks or in the deserts of Africa and Sahara. Likewise e boat racing is yet another challenging pastime out there in the sea or rivers. For powerless machine lovers cycling is the easiest but a challenge that brings about physical strength of the hobbyists.

And as if that is the end of the list. There is so much more to it that we will discuss each in coming days.

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Hobby Types – Cooking

Man cannot live without food and eating. But it is not the food one eats that matters, it is how the food is really cooked that matters the most. That is why so much care is taken by housewives and chefs around the world to cook meals and food for the people you really love and care about. Cooking thus is one of the most favourite hobbies the world over. Exclusive TV channels for teaching cooking and preparing new dishes throng the cable world, besides lot of magazines available on bookstalls related to cooking.

Cooking cannot produce delicious and yummy foods unless one puts one’s heart into one’s cooking. That is what makes cooking as a widespread hobby around the world. Cooking encompasses all types of methods and tools, combination of different ingredients to induce aromatic flavor and taste into one’s cooking. Besides, even with the same amount of ingredients, the taste would be different as the method and modalities differ from people to people. And of course unless the heart is there, the taste would be pathetic and ordinary.

One always loves the food cooked by one’s mother as there is no substitute to northerly’s love which she puts into the food she cooks for her off springs. And the same goes for the food cooked by a loving wife for her husband and the rest of the family. One can straightaway feel the difference in taste and know the mood of his mother or wife.

Housewives, cooks and chefs around the world innovate their styles to produce mouth watering dishes for their loved ones. Each country and region has its own taste and style depending on the indigenous aesthetics, types of agricultural produce, economic and religious considerations and constraints. One really has to adapt to the food of an area one is moving to. For example foods of Pakistan and India are very rich in spices and are often termed as “hot” by majority of the people around the world visiting these two countries as use of red chilies is very restricted in foods around the world.

The traditional cooking is often labeled as continental, oriental, Asian, Arabic, Mexican and Italian, beside others. One can find restaurants which specialize in a particular type of cooking or cooking belonging to a region. But whatever is the style or type, cooking is the way to express one’s love and affection for the loved ones.

We will talk of types of cooking, cooking methods and some recipes in the following posts. Till then bon appétit.

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Type of Hobbies – Scale Modeling

We were five brothers (we lost our elder brother February this year), each with distinct taste and hobbies. One of us had a flare for making models and replicas of various objects with cardboard. He would make life size models of guns and we would wear army uniforms of a deceased uncle and fight each other by making piquets in our rooms. This is how he started something that was later to become his profession and earning his bread and butter.

As time passed, his abilities became more polished and refined. He then started making small models of homes with card boards and would decorate these with furniture and other household. He would do it so precisely that when seen under a magnifying glass, one could see details of nuts and bolts. He was inching forward to something which at that time very few people could do. Although he studied product designing from the prestigious National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore, his orientation remained towards making models. After his graduation from NCA, he took up scale modeling, his hobby since childhood, as his profession. I remember he made a room sized scale model of a woolen factory which had dozens of spindles and machines looking exactly the same as original. He continues to do so till date. A cousin of mine, Ibrar Bhatti, also a graduate from NCA has also made his hobby of scale modeling into a thriving business and his models are a treat to watch. Seeing the photographs of his models, one can hardly guess these to be models.

The introduction was to introduce to you another type of hobbies – the scale modeling. Scale modeling is in fact exact replicas in a smaller scale of huge structures, buildings, machines and other structures to test the architectural details and introduce the would-be project to customers so that one gets to know what is about to come up on ground.

Similar to scale modeling is another field known as model engineering. The model engineering refers to making exact replicas of machines and their moving parts in metal to show as how the machine is going to work. The model engineered replicas can also be used for training and research purposes as well. We often see the car engine models which show each function of the car engine in motion. This is what model engineering is all about. Model engineering started as a branch of study in 19^th century, but it had more to do with hobbying rather than learning something from a school or a technical school.  

Scale modeling gained fame after the WW-II when industrialization got a boom. Hobbyists found a way of earning by demonstrating their skills in making scale models of everything that could be manufactured or constructed. Most of the models are now made of plastic and alloys which make it easier to give the required angle and rounded edges.

With the advent of computer graphics like Auto CAD, the trend to rely more on computer generated models is gaining popularity rather than the scale models. However, major infrastructures and building owners still prefer to have a life size scaled down model of their structure placed at the entrance of the show room to attract customers. These models are augmented by full screen projection systems to allow a 3-D viewing. The computer based graphic software provides accuracy up to 1000^th of an inch, which provides much finer details.

While computer graphics have overtaken manual scale and model engineering and modeling, there are still enthusiasts who like to make scaled down structures with their own hands, giving them the same satisfaction as an architect feels when a structure actually comes on ground. It is the hobby that matters most, not the advancement in technologies and techniques.

Photos Scale Models Courtesy: Ibrar Bhatti

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Type of hobbies – Reading

Reading is perhaps the most widely adopted hobby the world over. One may find people in waiting at airport or bus/railway terminals reading books or newspapers. The hobby is equally popular in school children when the start o read smaller books, and from here their love for reading takes a start. As one grows in age, the habit of reading also matures and from romantic novels, one turns to serious reading.

I remember my school days when reading the famous Readers’ Digest was our passion and within a couple of days of its arrival, we would have completely read it from one end to the other. Besides Readers’ Digest, comics and classics were our favourite pastime. I still remember the poor Sad Sack and his brute Serge, the Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Goofy, Little Lotta, Archie, Richie Rich and many others that abounded our bookracks. Since in those days TV had not come to our part of the world, our entire leisure was comics based.

When I grew up, James Hadley Chase, Harold Robins and Sidney Sheldon became my regular reading and I read almost every book of these authors that was available. Good days of reading and enjoying. AS life went on, newspapers, magazines and tabloids were added to my reading list. Thorn Birds and Alchemist became my favourite readings. Once as a young man, I was posted at Skasar, an isolated hilltop station near Sargodha. While on duty, I used to confined to a dark room with big radar screens for eight hours, the beauty of my duty was that every third day was a complete day off. Since there wasn’t much to move about, I would visit the small library and take as many books as I could. I read a lot of Agatha Christie and James Hadley Chase stuff there for three months and I really enjoyed reading.

Reading as a pastime introduces one to the history, the world of literature and art and a world of romance. It goes by you and follows your shadows in many forms as I discussed above.  Reading is perhaps the best pastime readily available at all times and anywhere. One doesn’t have to specially get ready to read – it is just the matter of picking anything and reading. Reading the same subject written by different authors gives us an insight as how the same matter can be presented in a different way and in different words. And this also helps us to shape and reshape our own thought process and perception of life and existence.

The paperbacks are very common as these are cheaper and lighter to carry. One would often see tourists and passengers carrying paperbacks and enjoying their reading and thus passing the travel time which may otherwise become hard to kill. Even when one is on vacation, a favourite book in a candle light out in wilderness is a treat and delight long not to be forgotten.

Internet provides a much wider, easily accessible and perhaps the cheapest source of reading. Internet is loaded with so much of knowledge and information that keeps a large number of people glued to their screens and find whatever they are looking for. From trash and junk to science, technology, art and literature, there is a sea of knowledge hidden in this tiny iron box – waiting to be explored and made use of.

Libraries and internet provide a basic source of reading. But roadside stalls also sell second hand books for those who cannot buy new books or do not have access to libraries or internet. But whatever source one may explore, reading has its own fun and joy. It is not wrong when people say that book is a man’s best friend.

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Types of Hobbies – Collecting

When talking of hobbies, these are of many types. Here in this post, I shall be discussing about “Collecting.”  Collecting various things is one of the most popular hobbies that hobbyists love doing. And there are lots of things that people collect. One could keep talking of small objects which for many may not cause an attention, but for those who love that particular object, it may be an instant eye catcher.

When talking of collecting, many things instantly come to mind like stamps, match boxes, train/bus/airline tickets and brochures, post cards, photographs, medals, and even books. While a lot many people love to read, there are also many who love to collect books to decorate their home libraries. They may not read, but collecting rare and exclusive books is one of the most expensive hobbies. Like stamps, coins are also favourites. Coins not only talk of history, they are also fortunes as these cost in many digits depending upon their rarity and vintage minting date.

I know many people who would like to display multi-volume encyclopedias in their homes. And when I took a small survey, I found that none of them has ever consulted this volumetric source of information.  With the internet coming to most of the houses, the use of books even as reference object is dwindling.

People also love to collect cars – vintage as well as modern. Recently there was a car rally of vintage cars in Pakistan from Karachi to Islamabad to collect donations for the flood victims of the country, which affected some 20 million. And I was amazed to see cars of 50s and 60s rolling on the roads. I will talk more about these cars and collecting vintage cars some other time.

I for myself collected stamps for quite a long time and have a pretty heavy collection of stamps, some dating even the start of the 20^th century. I share my collection in my blog My Philatelic World. I will share pages from my stamp album here too for those who love to collect stamps.

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