Hello Everyone, I am Owais Sheikh. I am from the country Pakistan. I live in the city of Karachi. I work as an SQA (Software Quality Assurance) Engineer since two years.

How my path intersected with My English Club (EC) is somewhat similar to others. Although my basics were good enough in English to survive through my student years. I was very fortunate to have studied under some excellent teachers who instilled belief in me that I was on the right path. But when I made the cross over from student life to professional life, I found my self lacking in fluency and clarity. Also my job requirements exposed the deficiencies in my linguistic skills as well as communication skills.

In the first few months I was just getting the hang of things and flowing with the motion with not much improvement. As a part of my job required to manage online content, communicating and reporting to foreign clients,the common medium was English and I found my self wanting. I tried to improve by reading a lot of stuff and searching for all the stuff I can get. That brought me to My English Club (EC). At first this outlook of the website did not make any impression on me and I joined reluctantly as I thought that I may not get the response or anything much useful. I just held my self back and only tried to read and study whatever the site had to offer. I searched for the solutions of my problems assuming that someone else might have come across the same, was provided with a solution here. To my surprise I did found many a solution, I just quietly consumed it. In the beginning writing was a major part of my work, therefore, I searched for structures, paragraphing and proper usage of phrases/Idioms/proverbs. I found many a thing in very unlikely places and blogs specially. I was being an ardent reader and observer, and was not inputting anything on my behalf.

It requires some courage to put yourself in the perspective of a global audience. I was not really confident to share anything or take part in of the activities. With time my writing improved by leaps and bounds. Now the focus of my job expanded to communicating with my clients either by chatting or calling them. That forced me to come out of my comfort zone, because writing or making reports can be corrected. But being live in session with someone I never felt confident enough and always doubted whatever I had said. That prompted me to join in the chatting endeavor. For more than a year I was only accumulating and had never really set foot in any kind of activity, thus I was kind of newbie. I started chatting as I had been spared time during my job. But before diving in I observed the chat for few days and studied the chat patterns and personalities. At first I thought of abandoning because I found some really belittling chatters. But as a planned part of my improvement I tried to join in and acclimatize.

It had been just a few days that I tried to be regular. Then I found out about the new chat option. At first I thought that it was there before and I just missed it. But when I found no information about it I started exploring it myself that led to my first blog Chatting Upgraded! A new Chatting Toolbar!. I was overwhelmed with the response and was really surprised when My English Club (EC) made me a star member. I am really grateful for that honor.

There are friends and foes alike in every place, I wish to win more friends and be part of the marvelous universe of My English Club (EC).

Regards,

Owais Sheikh

When today I logged into MyEC, I was just planning on killing time because its a Sunday. As I was about to join the chat room I found something peculiar along side the chatting room button and I was like 'I found something !!', it looked something like a button at the bottom right corner of my screen and I was like 'Ooo what does this button do!!'

It was on top of the old chat room bar.

And I couldn't held back any more and just had to click on it and Voila! This is what I found!

I had to investigate further to know more about it, therefore I started from the left.

Home Button: Clicking on it brings you to My EnglishClub Homepage.

Announcements Button: This button provides a section where any English Club announcements can be found, relating to any kind of activities and/or events.

Chatroom Button: The Chatroom button pops up a window which provides with three options.
First, it shows the lobby which shows the list of available Chatrooms.
Second, it allows us to create our own private chatting space.
Third, we can pop-out the chat window and open it as a separate window in the browser.

Clicking Create Chatroom asks us the type of chatroom we want to create.
1. Public room anybody can join.
2. Password protected & password shared with chosen ones.
3. Invitation only,  only you can invite your friends it will not be displayed in the lobby.

Single Player Games Button: This button enlists various single user games, organized as per genre.
You can select any category you fancy and start playing by just one click.

Facebook & Twitter Buttons: These buttons allow you to interact/follow MyEC on these popular social networking sites.

Scroll To Top Button: This button is the most useful thing for me, instantly gets me to the top of the page.

Offline/Online Button: By Clicking on this button you can access the members online/connected to MyEC as shown below.

The different colored circles along the names of the users indicate their Status.

You can communicate with any user by clicking on them.

You can search for a user by typing the name in the 'Find a user' box.

By clicking on the user name I initiated a chat session with my friend Yupa, and I was surprised with the loads of options I was provided with.

Here are details of the options listed:-

1.  The Audio/Video Call option to Initiate a call with a user.

2. The Share your screen feature which allows you to share your background.

3. The Handwriting option which allows you to write using a pen & send as an image.


4. This is the Play game option which allows you to play a game with your friend.

5. Share a whiteboard lets you share a white space where you can write, type and draw and have fun with your friend.

6. Share a collaborative document allows you to edit a document online in real time while other users can also see/edit the document. It allows you save the document and share/embed at other locations as well.

7. Share a file from your computer with the user.


8. Clear conversation button to clear all the conversation.


9. Show/hide time option if you want the time to be shown alongside the messages.

Chat Options Button: This button provides you with options to change your status like go offline, put a status message, enable/disable notification sounds as shown below.

You can set your status by writing in the box below 'My Status' and then click 'Set my status'.

You can choose from different options

1. Available
2. Busy
3. Invisible
4. Offline

You can enable/disable the sound notifications and popup notifications by selecting/deselecting the check box.

Close This Bar Button: If you are not willing to use the toolbar, then you can always choose to close it.

I hope that it helps you to understand, as I was trying to understand myself. There can be many things that I might have missed and welcome anything that adds to the information.

Regards

Owais Sheikh