Author: Saba Javed

That Humid Attic Evening in 2012 I still remember that humid summer evening in 2012. I sat cross-legged on my uncle’s worn-out attic carpet in Lahore. The fan creaked overhead, complaining about the heat. I was 19, messing with cracked Photoshop on an old Dell. I tried fixing a blurry mehndi photo of my sister. Pixels fought me stubborn, messy. But one filter made the colors pop. There was a quiet thrill. I thought: If scraps do this, what happens when tools catch up to dreams? That spark lingers. Especially now, watching gfxprojectality tech trends from gfxmaker burn bright. The…

That Rainy Afternoon in 2023 I remember that gray afternoon in late 2023. The rain tapped on the window like it had secrets. I was in my tiny Seattle apartment. Still calling myself a freelance developer. Really, just chasing bugs. My laptop glowed. A half-finished inventory system stared back. Crashing under load. “One more test,” I muttered. That’s when I found Moxhit4.6.1 software testing. Not in a tutorial. Not at a conference. In a forum thread. From someone as lost as me. I downloaded the trial. Half-expecting nothing. But the first run pulled my data clean. Something shifted. The rain…

That Rainy Afternoon When Words Clicked I remember that gray afternoon in early 2023. Rain tapped the window like it had secrets to spill. I was curled up in my tiny Brooklyn apartment. The leaky faucet kept time, drip-drip-drip. My phone buzzed. New York Times app. First time seeing Connections. Just sixteen words on a grid. I was drowning in deadlines, life a tangle of loose ends. I tapped a few by instinct. Chime. One group locked. Something inside cracked open. Like finding an old diary I’d forgotten. That single rainy day hooked me. Now, November 2025, the air is…

Introduction: The gin still lingers in my memory from that October night in Chicago. Wind whipped through the streets, sharp enough to make me second-guess everything. I stood before my dorm mirror clutching a thrift-store black cocktail dress, wondering if it was enough. What is cocktail attire for women? I kept asking myself not the dictionary version, but the one that lets you enter a room feeling unbreakable. That dress turned into my quiet rebellion. I wore it to interviews, weddings, heartbreaks. Each time, women’s cocktail attire revealed itself not as rules, but as feelings stitched into fabric. The Night…

That First Invitation I still remember the first black tie event I attended. It was winter 2019. The invitation came on thick cream paper. My hands shook reading “black tie.” The black tie dress code for women felt like a foreign code. I stood before my mirror in jeans and sweaters. Could I belong in that world? The Cab Ride Over That evening stays with me like a dream. I spent days searching black tie what to wear women. In the cab, city lights blurred. I clutched my bag tight. My heart matched the wheels on wet streets. That night…

The Flicker of a Basement TV I remember it like yesterday. The TV flickered in my dim basement. Late-night glow wrapped around me like a secret. Mid-80s summer, cicadas humming outside, stale popcorn in the air. I’d snuck downstairs after my parents thought I was asleep. Real Genius pulled me in on cable. There she was: Michelle Meyrink as Jordan Cochran. A whirlwind bouncing through lasers and inventions. Eyes sparkling with wild, unfiltered joy. Not a princess. Not a rebel. Just the spark that made everything feel alive. I sat knees to chest, thinking: Who is this girl? How does…

My First Low-Rise Jeans Moment I still remember slipping into my first low-rise jeans in the summer of 2002. I was fifteen, staring in my bedroom mirror, the house smelling of laundry and rebellion. Those electric blue Gap jeans sat so low I kept hiking them up. Paired with a glittery “Angel” baby tee, I felt like Britney Spears. Back then, 2000s fashion was a shout into the void we were kids buzzing with Y2K fears that fizzled, outfits screaming we were ready anyway. Maybe I clung so hard because it made me feel seen, even while tugging at the…

A Summer That Stays: Falling Into The Perfect Couple It was a sticky July evening in 2014, the kind where the air clings like a second skin, heavy with salt and the weight of things left unsaid. I was twenty-two, nursing a heartbreak that made every “perfect” thing jobs, friends, love feel like a lie. Curled up on my porch swing with a glass of cheap rosé, I opened Elin Hilderbrand’s The Perfect Couple, its cover of crashing waves pulling me in. Fast-forward to September 2024, when Netflix dropped the perfect couple cast into my life again, with Eve Hewson…

A Rainy Day Encounter It was one of those gray October afternoons, the kind where the sky feels like it’s holding its breath. I was twenty-three, dodging puddles in a city I barely knew, my heart bruised from a breakup that stung more than it should. I ducked into a boutique, not looking for anything but escape, when I saw it: Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb perfume, its grenade-shaped bottle catching the dim light. One spritz on my wrist, and the world shifted jasmine and vanilla wrapped me in warmth, like a friend who knows you’re hurting. I bought it on…

The Rainy Day That Sparked Something New Last spring, rain drummed against my window, turning the world gray and quiet. I was slumped on my creaky couch in a tiny apartment, duct tape holding the ceiling together. Work stress piled high, and a friend’s worried text went unanswered I wasn’t okay. Scrolling my watchlist, I picked a kdrama to watch, a romantic comedy Korean drama about a quirky chef and a grumpy hotel owner. By the end, I was laughing, my heart lighter than it had been in weeks. Those top Korean romance and comedy dramas slip into your soul,…