Good Mourning Pakistan

I was talking to a friend , the night BB was assassinated. He is a young businessman, and owns a successful startup. He was in US to meet some investor a week ago and the investor was quite hesitant on the note that the situation in Pakistan is quite fragile. Anything can go wrong without any reason. But they continued with the meeting. I smelled a little worry in his usual laughter. He knew what will follow the assassination, this time with a big reason, and this was just a week after that meeting. And investor is quite justified on his side; why would anybody who has even a little shred of reason with him, invest in a business that can potentially be torched any moment of the day, any day of the year, and that too without prior notice, God forbid.

And if hiss business is not getting investment, why should Zaid & Bakkar be concerned? I hope the office-going islooites would not have yet forgotten the lay-offs at EnterpriseDB and TouchStone. Luckily these were relatively at a smaller scale and the affectees were taken-care-of as other businesses were running just fine enough to accommodate them. So its not just him who will suffer, its us too, if we continued the way we are running the affairs since last three days. God forbid.

We, the people of Pakistan, murdered around 50 humans in last 3 days. We burnt 170 banks. We completely destroyed 18 railway stations. And the list is long. And we say we are mourning. Is this the way to mourn? Its good being emotional, but we should not let the reason get out of our way. Apart from the loss of lives, which cannot be measured for cost, we caused monetary loss to the national exchequer, we have destroyed businesses and private property.

I was talking to another friend last night, who is Systems Engineer at local office of a us-based software development company. Their company was already talking about moving this office in Islamabad to some other country. He is now seriously concerned as his countrymen are providing the guys sitting up there very serious reasons to follow their talks. God forbid.

I don’t know why, we always do, all the things, wrong !!!

Good Mourning PTV

I was watching PTV today evening, yes PTV, and guess what was on air? A lady was asking an old-man, I don’t know his name, about Hajj being in winters, what precautionary measures people should take? And the old-man was kind enough to share his views on the issue. Weired isn’t it? Its been more than a week Hajj was performed.

What I was able to guess is that since 3-day official mourning is being observed in all the governmental functionaries across the country, so is it @ PTV. And I don’t know what relationship religious programs have with mourning, but somehow PTV is airing Naats/Qawalis etc. Hajj being a religious matter, also came under the same heading, and the guy arranging the visuals was wise-enough to include this recording in today’s schedule.

The Departed: Benazir Bhutto

I have never been a fan of BB, rather I disagree with a lot of her policies, but the way she has been killed is very saddening. It was quite shocking.

I heard about the blast at a friend’s home, and that BB has also been taken to RGH. And believe me I was like this would just be a display that she has also been injured. As in all previous (so-called) suicide attacks at public meetings, none of the targets have been hit, rather it was always innocent people who died.

But by the time I reached home, the news was on air. She was dead. And reports say that she wasn’t killed by the blast, rather she was shot. And the killer then blew himself up. Another mystery in the political history of Pakistan that may never get resolved.

Liaquat Ali Khan, first PM of Pakistan, was also killed the same way on October 16, 1951, at the same place i.e. Liaquat Bagh Rawalpindi. The killer at that time was shot dead by a cop. And today on December 27, 2007, history repeated one part of the same incident.

Lets see what turn the politics in pakistan take, after this huge blow to one of the big political parties.

May her soul rest in heaven.

[ BBC | IMB ]

Eid Mubarak

Yup, second time it comes this year.

And this time its more joyous because, amazingly enough, we have 10 days to spare for eid-vacations   You don’t believe me? Yeah its hard to, but we’ll be back to our desks on December 31st, 2007, insha’Allah.  Management on our end of the world was kind enough to tell people, “Your this much vacations are pending with us, for the current year, and you have been working like anything for the past two-plus years, so we hereby send you on a vacation of 4-days.” Yeah, including week-ends, Quaid-e-Azam Day & those of Eid, it makes a total of 10. So far so good.

Eid Mubarak now, because I’ll be leaving for my village tomorrow morning. We normally do this every Eid: whole family gathers and we enjoy the festival.  Lets hope it goes the same as it does every year.

And while you are onto Eid, don’t forget to see this, as somebody might be watching your way to have something to eat, on this Eid.

See ya !!!

Farewell guys

Yeah today we bid farewell to Umair, Ejaz & Rizwan. They are leaving for good.

For the farewell party, a lunch was arranged at a nearby restaurant.

Food was good, so was the service.Our tables were ready by the time we arrived. We started at sharp 1, and ended at sharp 2 The match, between India & Pakistan was on, and the guys sitting near to the screen were kind enough to share their expert-opinions on condition of the pitch.

Yet it was not all that was good. There was that blue-eyed security-gaurd filtering as to which cars should go to hotel parking and which should be parked on the pavement. Quite frustrating. And they had no washrooms available for Tai-Pan, amazing huh? You claim to be among the top brass hotels in Pakistan, and you don’t have a washroom available for the restaurant. And because of some bla-bla conference going on, you have to go all the way from outer gate to the lobby to see one. Also watch for that 2o Rs. charity that they include in your bill by default. If you are keen enough to have read those tiny cards placed on the tables mentioning about the charity, you can have it removed form the bill, they will charge you otherwise.

After lunch, we had three dozes of “Awaam-se-Khitaab” by each of the-leaving-guys. This is a centuries old tradition here, that we ask for a doze of this address. Although no sense-making-stuff is expected to be delivered, but just for the fun of it And not to mention, sometimes people really get emotional in their khitaabs.

And yes, after going through all this stuff, everybody came yelling, “Oey itney pese lagwa deye”, “aur koi jagah nahi thi farewell dene ke leye”, “aenda hum koi farewell nahi den ge” and the stuff:)

I think we are no more going to have parties at Tai-Pan, although we never had many, and the guys over there: you just lost a good lot of customers.

A day home

After quite long, I have spent a whole day at home. It feels so relaxing. Woke up at 11, newspaper – I read on Sundays, breakfast, had my (very dirty) car washed, lunch, a bit of tweaking with my nai-naweli blog-added movies/books etc, watched TV, and now writing this post. Quite a day.

Was wondering if we can have some solution to this everlasting car-wash problem. On weekdays its out-of-question to have the wash. In evening, service stations get closed by the time you leave office, and in the morning, although they open quite early, but then if I can wake up that early, I would rather love to reach office in time than to have a car-wash.

Yeah rite, why don’t I ask my driver for this? Coz for that to happen, you need to have one

On weekends, you get to witness that its not just the case with you, its a global problem. Everybody is there, waiting for those lucky cars to get off the stand. There normally are 2-3 cars in the queue before you, that means 2-3 hours of wait, or you can just leave. The decision is yours and I normally opt to leave, hence a very dirty car. Sometimes there is only 1 in the queue, in that case I prefer to stay, but this does not happen very often.

Once in a blue moon, you get the stand waiting for you, may be on a Saturday morning, and sometime even on Sundays, as it happened today. Yeah lucky me, it was my day today

Get the smart guys in …

We are planning to organize a series of Talent Hunt shows at the universities of the capital. Yes, on the spot screening and interviews. Students will be short listed and somewhat graded, the shortlisted ones will be called for in-campus interview based on their grading. And we expect to get the best minds of graduating classes across the capital, even before they make it to the market

In Pakistan, in Software Development industry, there might be few, or none, companies who are actually and actively concerned about the quality of people they hire or they keep. Although every company scrutinize the candidates in interview, and filter out the best among the applicants, but what about the ones who were a lot better and they didn’t happen to apply for the post. Yes you have to go and get them from their doorsteps. Its seriously like this. If this seems crazy to you, you better spend sometime with Joel Spolsky. This talent hunt series is a doorstep project.

We’ll, probably start with Islamic, yeah my Alma Matter. And we’ll, probably, be there in next week. I will update this post, once we are decided on the calender.

I’ll really appreciate any feedback if you have been into such workshops before. As for us, this is first-time.

What is a “LOTTA” ?

Yeah, interesting enough?

I just started my blog and was wondering how to let people know about this mega happening on the face of internet. From some remote cell of my mind, yes I posses one, Bloggers.pk popped up. I went on to register my blog. I was impressed to read, “The blog author must be of Pakistan origin, to verify this we ask you to answer one question”, among the conditions to qualify for registration, and waited anxiously for the question to come up.

And the question was … yeah rite, “What is a “LOTTA”?”

So much Pakistani

OK, first post.

Gardish (as-sani), because I have been doing some tech-reporting on Gardish some years back, and this one is second in the series. I have recently started with Islamabad Metroblog, and while I was on to blogging certain things touched my mind but couldn’t blog them on IMB as those were not related to Islamabad.

Enough of a reason to start this blog.

Lets see what comes our way ….

See ya!