Tales of Habits and Other Lesser Known Past Times

The Just In Case Files of Shandar Misttry, Inventive Generalist

2012-02-01T16:13:00.003+05:00

I have started a Twitter Book Project. I plan on writing a novel (at least a novella) on Twitter.

Not "What is Twitter?" or "Things to do on Twitter." A book written inside the 140-characters box of Twitter.

It has it all: Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Superheroes, Aliens, Love, Sex, Rainbows, Fairies, Unicorns, Elves, Trolls, Wizards...

... Murder, Intrigue, Mystery, Espionage, Conspiracy Theories, Action, Romance, Comedy, and all the rest of the things people read about.

But not necessarily in that order.

Follow me on Twitter @omerwahaj (or follow this link: https://twitter.com/#!/omerwahaj) to read the story.

Back by Popular Demand; or Sorry for the Inconsistent

2011-08-10T01:33:00.021+05:00

It's been a while since I wrote here (funny that it was Ramadan last when I wrote and it's Ramadan once again) and it's been a while since (weird 90's nostalgia* and crappy song playing in my head) I did those "You know you're in..." routine. So without further ado and one more cliche, I present to you:

You Know You're in Karachi When You Are Not Allowed to Take Your "Cold Rings" Inside Shops in Malls - I recently went to some of the malls here in Karachi and saw some really interesting things. For instance, I didn't know that even malls were constructed according to classes. One of the malls I went to had a really crappy ground floor, but things got better, the shops got larger, and the air conditioner got cooler as I climbed the floors. By the time I was on the top floor, it felt like I was all dressed up in designer's clothes, that I was running free in the meadows, and was frozen solid. However, the funniness and hilarity remained same throughout. I bought a Mirinda from OTPT and was about to enter a shop, when the shopkeeper looked at me with a disappointed look, and pointed his finger towards a sign on his door. It said, "No foods or cold rings allowed." I don't even wear a ring but the man would not let me take my Mirinda inside. What a nutter.

On a related note (and also on a lower floor), I found a shop that said it was holding a sale and there was 40% off on all paints. Actually, the sign said, "40% off. Paints only." This was quite deliberately stuck to a shelf full of clothes. My first thought was that it must mean solid colors, as in 40% off on shirts/pants that were only red or blue or green or yellow or pink (if that's the way you swing) and not on stripes or plaids or checks or pictured ones. Needless to say, I was wrong again; it was 40% off on the pants only, didn't matter what color/design they were or what was printed (or not printed) on them. It was in the same mall that I saw King's Corn and their tagline: "Sweety and Tasty;" I was surprised they hadn't added "Corny" to it as well.

You Know You're in Karachi When You Read This on a Pizza Delivery Menu:

- Pizza is not a matter of life or death! It is much more important than that... Considering all the violence happening in Karachi these days, makes you wonder now, doesn't it? Is the pizza mafia to blame?

- Flair tasty & enriched - What does that even mean?

- Unforgotable taste - Even if you wanted to forgot the taste, you wouldn't be able to. Why? Because it is unforgotable.

- Pizza lagacy at best - At worst, it would not lag as bad as the new Maxcom-Taken-Over-and-Given-in-by-PTCL connection does.

And to top it all off (Rs. 100 extra for topings), all of these appeared on the same menu.

You Know You're in Karachi When Shops Open for 9 Hours But Shopkeepers are Only There for 3 - Most of the shops in Karachi, whether they are selling clothes, shoes, books, paint, cement, or any other necessary things, open at around noon. An hour after opening the shop, the shopkeepers go to the mosque to say their afternoon prayers. They can easily pray inside their shop, which would save them a lot of time walking to the mosque, waiting for the jamaat to start, and walking back to the shop, but no, they insist on taking a 45-minute break because it earns them more sawab; so what if the customers have to wait, who cares? The shopkeepers are amassing their tolls to pay their way into heaven. After the prayer break, they take a lunch break, only to take evening and sunset prayers breaks and various chai and miscellaneous breaks till they close shop. To add to all of these, they take additional breaks during load shedding hours, because who can work in the dim lights that their UPS/generators support? Who needs to work so hard, when Pakistan's economy is booming, per capita income is very high, and everyone is enjoying not just the basic amenities of life, but all the leisures as well? Doesn't matter if they work 3 hours a day, have no electricity half the time, and treat their customers with disdain as if the shopkeepers were doing the customers a favor by working at their own shops; just say "Aall iz vell," and all will be.

You Know You're in Karachi When People Tell You Something is Right Just Because They Are (or Everybody Else is) Doing It - One of the things that has started to really irk me is when people tell me what they think is right. People are always insisting upon telling me that what they are doing is perfectly all right even though it seems oddly wrong. For instance, I noticed that a plumber installing a large water tank high up near the ceiling was putting it on an extremely flimsy support that neither looked strong nor stable. Even my 4-year old niece thought that it looked shady and that it would fall soon; and when I questioned his method, he calmly told me not to worry, as he has been doing it for years. I told him just because he has been doing something for years doesn't necessarily make it ok, to which he only smiled and looked at me as if I was mad or something. "Kuch nahee hota, sahab," he told me. "Yeh chalta hai." Nope, doesn't walk. This is exactly why you hear about roofs falling and building collapsing in Karachi all the time. People think that if it holds for an hour, it would hold forever.

In a similar situation, I was getting my bathroom fixed, as a few of the tiles had cracked and broken. I went to get some new tiles and the shopkeeper told me that he was out of the kind of tiles I wanted but he had some other tiles in some other style. I told him that those were not the kind of tiles I wanted, to which he replied, "Aray sahab. Yeh tau buhat acha tile hai. Aaj kal buhat chal raha hai. Sub yeh laga rahain hain. Aap bhee yehee laga lein." I find it quite funny that people think that since everyone is doing something, it must be the correct and the only proper thing to do.

Another thing that relates to this, what I would like to term "idiotic obstinacy" of most Pakistanis, is how everyone loves to deny that what they have done is wrong. For instance, please refer to one of my earlier posts about waiters forgetting the order and bringing the wrong items. In it, even though I mentioned the waiter's blunder, I did not tell you that when the waiter brought the wrong order and I pointed it out to him, he calmly said to me, "Sir, aapne yehee order diya tha." This is very common, as no one is willing to accept their mistake. A few days ago, I was invited to play at a party and I was told that the sound system would be provided at the venue. When I went there to test my sound, I heard some weird crackling in one of the speakers. Believe you me, it took me a good portion of the next hour trying to convince the "sound man" that there was in fact something wrong with the speaker and that he should fix it; the man kept denying that there was anything wrong. This is something that I am noticing more and more and I think it has to do with our people's inherent laziness; they do not want to admit their mistakes, as they would then have to fix it, which would mean extra work for them, which would mean not being able to take as many prayers break, lunch breaks, chai breaks, and load shedding breaks as they want.

You Know You're in Karachi When You Jump With Joy, Dance About, Throw a Party, and Distribute Mithai when KESC Announces that Load Shedding would Now be 3 hours instead of 12 - This is only upon the announcement, mind you, before the load shedding actually decreases. When it actually drops, you end up worrying your hair out because the "light hasn't gone for the past 8 hours" and you keep stressing over when the next outage will happen.

You Know You're in Karachi When The Fumigators Don't Wear Masks; They Take Tea - So I called these guys to get my house fumigated and they showed up with backpacks full of insecticide and started spraying my walls and floors. Everything about these guys was very professional; they had proper uniforms, some hi-tech spraying equipment, and an odorless-yet-deadly liquid that they drenched the inside of my house with. However, the only thing lacking were the masks on their faces. I had gone out of the house after they had started spraying but I found that I had forgotten my keys inside, so I ducked in real quick and went and got my keys. Even though I came out within a minute, I came out coughing and wheezing, with my eyes burning and my throat feeling like, well, like I had swallowed/breathed in some insecticide (by the way, it this was when I realized that the spray was odorless-yet-deadly). I later asked the fumigators about how they could endure that toxic environment and why they didn't wear any masks. It hindered their work, they told me. "Aur koyee masla nahee hai, sahab," one of them told me with the usual self-assured-confident-yet-most-likely-misplaced conviction of us Pakistanis as he handed me the bill. "Thora bura lagta hai galay ko, liken itna masla nahee hai." I told them that this was wrong and bad for their health and that they should wear masks while fumigating houses, to which they told me that they have a solution for it that didn't include any masks; all they do is take tea at the closest dhaaba around after each fumigation, and that makes them feel better. I was flabbergasted red; with this logic of taking tea after inhaling poison, no one in Pakistan should ever get any kind of sick.

You Know You're in Karachi When People Pull Numbers Out of their Asses - When someone in Karachi or someone from Karachi tells you that they would be 15 minutes, it does not mean 15 minutes; it can be any arbitrary amount of time depending upon various factors, including the profession of the person, his or her distance from you, the time of the day, and the type of mood the person is in. For instance, it is very common for KESC employees to tell you on the telephone at any given time of the day that there is a fault in your system and that it would be fixed within the hour. Sometimes, the electricity is restored even before you hang up the phone; other times you keep waiting the whole night but "the hour" never passes. The guy who fixes your air conditioner would tell you that he will be at your place by 4pm, but you can never be sure if he meant 4pm today, tomorrow, the day after, etc. All of this becomes even more frustrating when you show up at your car mechanic's shop to pick up your car at 2pm because he called you there at 1:30, only to find that the ustaad has gone to the mosque for the afternoon prayers and would be back after lunch, chai, load shedding, etc; or in other words, in 15 minutes.

And that's it with my post for today. If it sounds callous and bitter, it is because it is just that.

* I love how I just incorporated another "Past Time" reference in there. I am so punny that I laugh it.

The Iftar/Dinner Conundrum

2010-09-04T03:09:00.001+05:00

I don’t get these iftar/dinner parties. Notice I have put a slash in between iftar and dinner but we all know that they are more like iftar AND dinner parties. People reach your place just before its time to break their fast and leave as soon as they have had dinner, and all of this takes place within two hours. I don’t get it.

Ramadan is supposed to be about control, sacrifice, and self-restriction. When it says that we must abstain from eating food, it is so we can learn self-control and learn how to manage our hunger. It does not mean that we have pakoras and dahi barays and cholays and fruit chat and chicken patties and samosas and veggie roles and daal and chanay and roohafzah for iftar and then have chicken karahi and biryani and behari kabab and sashlik and quorma and nihari and naan and parathas for dinner and then parathas and kababs and omelets and cereal and fried eggs and toast and butter and balai and phainnis for sehri. I am pretty sure that if one were to calculate all the food that one consumes on a normal “roza,” it will be at least fifty percent more than what that same person would consume on a normal day. It would be common sense to think that people would lose weight during Ramadan because they are going hungry for most of the day, but actually, most people end up gaining weight during this holy month. The reason: they have a hearty iftar, a hearty dinner, and a hearty sehri, all within the span of a few hours and this more than amply covers and exceeds their daily calorie intake.

The worst are the people who only pretend that they are actually following the true meaning of Ramadan. We had an iftar/dinner (notice the slash again) party at our place the other day and it was the same deal: various fried and fattening food items for iftar and forty-five minutes after the respected rozaydaars had had their fill of iftar, dinner was served with a serving of different dinner dishes. It was a family affair, so I called out to one of my cousins (second cousin from marriage [his not mine] thrice removed) and told him to come eat.

“Nahi yaar,” he made a disgusting face at me while rubbing his stomach. “I just had too much iftari and I am completely full. I cannot eat right now. This is not how I usually am during Ramadan. At home, I don’t have iftar, I have dinner straightaway. But today is different, as I couldn’t resist all the fried and fattening food items.”

He actually didn’t really say the last line, but I imagined that that’s what he was trying to tell me.

I walked away thinking wow, this guy is really upholding the spirit of Ramadan. Now why couldn’t everybody be like him? Why do we have to have three large meals a day in an abnormal way, when we can easily have two? This is the way to fast and not the way…

I was unable to finish my thoughts, as just a few minutes later, I saw that same cousin (second cousin from marriage [his not mine] thrice removed) of mine stuffing behari kababs down his throat and up his nostrils. He was really packing it up. Poor guy. He must be used to having his dinner instead of his iftar at this time.

No More Loadshedding and Other More Popular Good News

2010-04-01T17:55:00.004+05:00

It is my pleasure to relay the news that the KESC just announced that there would be no more loadshedding in Karachi starting from today. I was extremely suspicious about this news because KESC has been promising this for years now and it has only turned out to be complete air so far. However, I did some research and it is really going to work this time.

According to an official spokesperson, “KESC has installed and initiated three new power plants in the city and these would be enough to supply Karachi with all its power needs, making this city true to its nickname again. Not only will these new power plants be able to generate enough electricity for Karachi, we would be left with a surplus of 250MW, which we will be selling to other cities as well.”

This is great news. I am so glad that we can enjoy continuous and non-stop electricity supply to our homes, offices, and factories now. It is so annoying when the electricity is turned off every few hours for a few hours and you are left sitting in the hot and humid heat or darkness; or both. So, from now on, no worrying that you will miss your favorite show on television, or that your Playstation might turn off in the middle of saving the game and wiping out your entire progress, or that you will not be able to iron your clothes in time and get ready to go your cousin’s wedding. And no more spending extra to get generators, UPS, and fuel for the generator every other day!

In other news, all of which is good too, I have just heard that they have a new traffic system in place that will eliminate all traffic jams in Karachi. Now, it won’t matter where you are or what car you are driving, you will always get to your destination in time. This new system is very simple and it works to have all the drivers drive in their respective lanes. You won’t ever see anyone coming head-on from the wrong side of the road when you are going one-way. The motorcyclists will have their own lanes, the buses and trucks will have their own roads, there would be no potholes and all the pedestrians would use overhead bridges instead of running through the middle of the main road.

Also, they have this new technology out starting from today that would instantly dissolve all garbage, including blue, green, black, and white plastic bags, and recycle them into pure oxygen and water. This would work to eliminate the trash problem in Karachi, making it a hygienic haven, while at the same time providing us all with nice, clean air to breathe and an abundance of running water.

There is more good news, but I am afraid you are not going to believe me, you know, with what day it is today and all that.

Waiters: Geniuses or Goldfish?

2010-03-03T23:33:00.003+05:00

Did you know that all waiters in Karachi, especially those working in front of Hot & Spicy kabab rolls, have perfect photographic memories. Yes, they do. Not only because they insist that they do, but also because they believe it themselves. The only problem is that their lenses are broken, the aperture is incorrectly set, their shutter speed is too slow, and the film in their camera has been exposed to too much light.

I learnt this the hard way earlier today when we went to Hot & Spicy and ordered some rolls. There was a few of us there and our order was pretty varied. Some wanted a regular chicken roll, some wanted it in a roti, others wanted garlic-mayo in theirs, and some wanted a club sandwich. I gave the order for seven different people to our waiter, who stood there, memorizing everything I was saying. One look to his face and I knew he was going to mess up. I asked him, at least three times, to write down the order, but he told me, more than three times, that: "Sir. Aap fikar hee na karein. Mujhe sab yaad hai." (Don't worry. I remember the order perfectly). I asked him to repeat the order, through which he fumbled, but was able to get it right after some help from me and my friends. Sort of like a child at school rote-speaking a poem with the help and encouragement of his teacher.

And guess what? Instead of remembering the order perfectly, he messed it up completely. Two garlic-mayos in parathas instead of the one in roti and one chicken roll instead of the two of beef. It was a total disaster. When I told the waiter that I was now in fact karring fikar (worried) and asked him what happened to his perfect memory, all he could muster was a sheepish grin and a scratch on his head. Needless to say, we had to send the order back and this time sent a hand-written note along with the waiter.

So, my Karachiite friends, waiters here are not geniuses; they are more like goldfish with their 5-second memories. Make sure that whenever you go to any restaurant/eatery/kiosk/dhaaba wherever in Karachi, make sure that you tell the waiter to write your order down on PAPER with a PEN (no, not in his mind with air). If the waiter says he does not have a paper and a pen, insist that he brings one and refuse to place the order until he writes it down or you write it down for him.

Unless of course, you don't mind eating beef and garlic when you actually wanted chicken and cheese.

How to Party It Up in Karachi on Less Than Rs. 100 a Day

2010-02-16T14:22:00.005+05:00

So, you want to party, but have no friends? You want to go to a dance amidst strobing lights and loud music, but are never invited to any of such parties? You want to attend Club Nights, Bollywood Nights, Pay-Us-Rs. 5,000-Per-Couple-To-Watch-Other-People-Watch-You-Dance Nights, but cannot afford to go to such venues?

Well, worry not. I have the perfect solution for you. All you need is a vehicle - any kind will do, a walkman/discman/mp3 player/radio, and earphones. Just take your car/taxi/motorcycle/cycle/van/truck/bus/rick shaw/taanga/gadha gaaree and take a ride on to Shahra-e-Faisal. Find one of the new cop-cars that they have slowly patrolling on the road with their continuously flashing blue and red lights, wear your headphones, put the music of your choice, and just follow these cars around. For some odd and no apparent reason, these cop cars are determined to roam the streets with their lights turned on and flashing - ALL THE TIME. They think that they must use these lights all the time, no matter what, and no matter where they are going with a total disregard for patients of epilepsy falling, twitching, shuddering, and seizing up all around them.

Might as well use these lights for some good and party it up behind them.

So How Big is Your Generator Anyway?

2009-05-17T11:09:00.003+06:00

I was sitting at one of my friend’s house the other night and he had some people over whom I was meeting for the first time. As it happened, the electricity went out a couple of times and we were all left in an awkward darkness for a few seconds in between the time the lights went off until it took my friend’s chawkidaar to turn the generator on. I found my friend embarrassingly apologizing to the group for not being able to run the a/c on the generator because “there was something wrong with the generator and it was not running on full power at the time otherwise it really has enough juice to run even two a/c’s at a time, etc.” This sparked a conversation about what kind of a generator everyone had and how powerful it was. As the conversation progressed, I found myself growing increasingly conscious about the size of my generator because every one there were talking about their high-powered-automatic generators as if they were talking about owning some sort of a Italian designer suit or sports car, or both. The thing I realized was that generators, like cars and cell phones, have become not only a necessity but also another status symbol and items for showing off among the pretentious population of Karachi.

You would think that I would be extremely glad and content to have a small 4.2 kVA generator that can run all the fans in my house, all the lights, and perhaps the TV and maybe a fridge if I am careful and use only a few lights. It’s a bit loud when it runs and it’s the kind where you have to pull on a chain in order to start it. Also, I have to turn off my deep freezer, a/c’s, and all other heavy appliances in my house before I can turn the generator on as it cannot support so much load. I am living alone these days and I don’t have a chawkidaar so I am the one who has to get up and turn off the appliances before turning the generator on every time the electricity fails. And then I have to stay near my living room so that I can hear the sweet and wonderful bell that rings (music to my ears) to indicate the electricity is back and it’s time to turn the generator off.

You would be wrong: I am not happy with my generator. And I realize it’s not because I think having a bigger generator would mean me having a higher social status; it’s because having a bigger generator would mean that I have less shit to worry about every day. I, being the ungrateful ass of a human being that humans are, want an even bigger and better generator. I want the super duper super silent 25 kVA kind where I don’t have to turn off anything in my house and it purrs like a kitten when its running rather than sounding like a helicopter about to crash land in my lawn. I want it to come installed with an automatic starter so that it turns itself on when the power goes out and then turn itself back off when it comes back. I want to be able to sleep through power outages with my a/c running full speed and no worries that the food in my freezer would go bad if the electricity doesn’t come back within the next 4 hours.

I realize how ungrateful I am being and how I must sound like a pathetic pretentious percentage of the population I described earlier. But what can I say? I find myself living in a new class-system in Karachi: those who have a super duper generator, those who have a regular generator, and those who don’t have a generator at all*. And I understand that this last group of people must comprise a huge percent of the Karachi population and are the ones who are the most miserable without having any alternative power source at all. And I feel so stupid and ungrateful about whining over having to get up every time the electricity goes and having to contend with spending the time being under only a fan. The reason I feel that this is so bad is actually not because I feel stupid and ungrateful but because I have to feel stupid and ungrateful over such a ridiculous condition. This just goes on to show how bad the electricity situation in Karachi has become when even people who own generators are not happy and the power outages continue to have a negative effect even on people who have an alternative source of energy. I am frustrated because I have a generator that is not powerful enough. And this frustration is not because I envy those who have a bigger generator but because it is still extremely inconvenient for me to go through the hassle of turning it on and off 16 times a day (and night) and still not being able to use every thing in my house. KESC is failing Karachi on not only being unable to provide adequate electricity to the city but also because it is now responsible for creating so many different problems on so many different levels, e.g. creating all sorts of weird psychological problems, what with all these various generator-related inferiority/superiority complexes and these new kinds of stupefyingly stupid social syndromes.

Isn’t all of this extremely pathetic**?

* I am currently ignoring people who have UPS and invertors installed in their houses, as they would be a topic of some other post some other time.

** not my ingratitude, but the distressing electricity situation in Karachi. Well, ok, both my ingratitude as well as the distressing electricity situation in Karachi.

Pimp Your Landmarks Here

2009-05-04T19:01:00.005+06:00

Last night found me at the Teen Talwar (Three Swords) intersection after about a month and I was surprised to see that this landmark monument is now being sponsored by Bank Alfalah. The Teen Talwars are three large marble swords, each signifying one of Quaid-e-Azam’s words of creed, the credo being Unity, Faith, and Discipline and now, two large blocks of marble have been added to the monument and these read Bank Alfalah in large blue letters on all four sides.

I remarked about this to my friend, who defended this move by saying, “at least the bank is going to maintain it now. Can’t you see the swords are so clean and the water fountains are running all the time?”

I am sorry, but I have to disagree. Is this really necessary? Is our government so desperate and incapable of maintaining our landmarks that they need corporations to pay them rent on them and take the responsibility of maintaining them? This is just ridiculous. What next? The Sabun 101 Menar-e-Pakistan? Frooto’s Faisal Masjid? Ding Dong Quaid-e-Azam ka Mazaar?

An Australian Advice to End Pakistani Corruption

2009-04-27T01:24:00.008+06:00

So, last night, I was sitting in a semi-formal environment being the youngest one at the table. I wasn’t actually being the youngest, it just happened that I was the youngest one there. Amongst the other people present were two of my cousins, both considerably older than me, some of their even older friends, one of whom had brought an Australian on vacation who was also the same age as my older cousin's older friends. Anyhow, age has got nothing to do with this post and I am only mentioning all of this in order to establish the serious tone that was hovering over that particular table in that particular semi-formal environment. The talk on the table added to the somber atmosphere as it progressed into a heated discussion about our current government, systems, corruption, and the corruption in our government and systems. One of my older cousin’s even older friends started talking about how he was going through a lot of trouble in getting his land transferred/sold/or something like that.

“Everywhere I go they ask for a bribe. I went to the registrar’s office and he asked for a kickback on my sale, that lousy son of a bitch,” said my older cousin’s even older friend.

“Yeah,” added my other older cousins’ other older friend. “It is like this everywhere here in Karachi. Nothing gets done unless you pay your way through it. I had to go to court for some problem and I had to bribe everyone from the goddamn peon to the mazharfakhar judge.”

The poor Australian man had just sat there, listening to the whole thing wide-eyed, and surprised, and only at this point, he decided to speak up.

“So guys,” he said in a helpful, considerate, a heavily accented Australian, and an extremely serious voice. “If you have to give bribes to all these people, the judges, the lawyers etc, why don’t you do something and complain about it to the police?”

And that was the end of the sober, solemn atmosphere at the table.

Time Travel and Other Lesser Known Benefits of Daylight Saving

2009-04-14T15:56:00.006+05:00

Most of the countries in the world adopt daylight savings so that their hard working citizens can have a little more of the day left at the end of their day. This means that people who work from 9 to 6 to get home by 7 still have an hour or so of the daylight in which they can do their chores or spend time with their family. This makes the workers more productive as they feel they have a longer day and more time to spend in the sun. In Pakistan, however, the main prerogative for adopting daylight saving is to save electricity. Even though I can understand the principles of how this can potentially be achieved, I don’t think that the KESC, the Pakistani government, or most of the Pakistani public really understands how this could be possible and this kind of sort of defeats the whole purpose of advancing the clocks an hour in Pakistan. I don’t know why they did it last year and I don’t know why they are doing it again because the electricity problem was not solved at all. I think that the electricity shortage might even have worsened because of this, as we saw at least 3-4 hours of load shedding in Karachi even during the winters.

Nevertheless, it happened last year and it is going to happen again this year. Tonight at midnight, all clocks in Pakistan would be advanced an hour, and we will lose one hour of our summer. As mentioned above, there are many advantages of doing this. However, there are some more benefits that people are not aware of and I list them here:

Time Travel – Many people do not realize this but this is the best time for time travel. We all have the opportunity to challenge Einstein and his ideas about relativity and whatnot, as all of us in Pakistan will jump an hour ahead in time tonight. One minute it will be 11:59pm and the next 1:00am. I am pretty excited about that!

Loan Nullification – Do you have some outstanding loans that you have repay? Well, being a Pakistani, I have come up with a very simple solution to all your problems. Call the people you owe money to and tell them that you are giving them a one-time offer of paying them their entire loan back all at once. Just ask them to collect their dues anytime between midnight and 1:00am tonight.

Two-timing – Last year, many people faced a lot of confusion over what time it was as some people decided not to adopt daylight saving. What we don’t realize is that this gives us a great opportunity to two-time everyone. It is, after all, a fact that people will be following two-times and this would make it completely kosher for anytime to two-time anyone and everyone else.

Being Late for Work – Yes, now you have a perfect excuse (at least for the next whole week) of coming in an hour late to work. The first day, you can always forget to set your clock ahead; the second day, your alarm clock would go off at the wrong time; the third day your driver would have the wrong time, and so forth.

No More Confusion over “What Time is It?” – It would be 8pm then when it would be 7pm now, which means that according to the old time, you would be one hour behind the time that it would be now. Now would be an hour ahead, which means that if it were 7pm now, it would actually be 6pm then according to the old time but you will be ahead an hour according to the new time. The old time then would be an hour behind us and we would now be an hour ahead in the new time. See? No confusion at all.

Modern Day Exercises for Shedding a Load During Load Shedding

2009-04-03T05:28:00.007+05:00

Almost everyone is health conscious these days but almost everyone is also very lazy. People tend to shy away from doing any exercise and prefer to sit or lie down all day. Most people are so lazy that they won't have anything else but 'fast' foodⁱ delivered to their homes/offices just so they won't have to make any unnecessary movements other than sitting or lying down. This is a big problem as it can be very difficult to motivate people to take up exercise. This is why I have come up with a very viable solution for everyone for this upcoming summer. I present to you: the Modern Day Exercises for Shedding a Load During Load Shedding

1. The Generator Starter Bend and Pullⁱⁱ: Great for your back and arms and very easy to execute. Flip the switch on the generator, bend down and grab the rope, strain your back a bit, and pull with a sudden jerk. Repeat as many times 'load-shedding' occurs or 6 to 8 times a day, whichever comes first.

2. The Forearm Newspaper Fan Swivel: No electricity and feeling hot? Need to build those forearm muscles? All you need is a newspaper and an arm and you are all set. Just hold up the paper in your hand, point it towards your face, and swivel your arm in a fanⁱⁱⁱ-like motion. Feel cool and develop those bi/tri-ceps!

3. Electricity Generating Treadmill Generator: Don't have a generator, but a lot of flab around your tummy? Worry not. Here is a solution that works as a double-edged sword killing you two birds with the same stroke: an innovative new technology that combines your treadmill with an inductor, alternator, and whatnot in order to give you the first ever Human Powered Electricity Generator DELS1000^iv. Simply start running on the treadmill, shed a load, and worry not about load shedding. Order yours today!^v

4. The Jog-Cool Off: The humid weather with an unpowered ceiling fan getting you down? Missing the cool wind hitting your face 6 to 8 hours a day? Just get up and start jogging. Doesn’t matter where you do it, as long as you keep running and let the air around you breeze into you^vi.

ⁱ e.g. inexplicably heaped salads

ⁱⁱworks only if you have a manually starting generator. For those who do not have a generator refer to the Forearm Newspaper Fan Swivel or the Electricity Generating Treadmill Generator.

ⁱⁱⁱ not the ceiling fan

^ivDesigned Especially for Load Shedding.

^vFor more details on how to order this revolutionary new device, leave a comment below.

^viThis is actually not a joke*. I remember many years ago, one of my aunts employed a kid (who had come down all the way from cold-weathered Chitral) to help around the house. Poor kid used to live in a small room with asbestos roofing and his room would get really hot in the summers. You can imagine how he must feel when the electricity would go off, leaving him sweating in the hot and humid summer weather of Karachi. One day, during the load-shedding hour, we heard noises, like someone was running around the house in circles. My cousin and I went to investigate and found the kid running around the house in circles. We stopped him and asked him what he was doing, to which he told us that running makes the air hit him like a breeze.

*I am seriously not joking. Scouts’ honor.

Last Salad at Pizza Hut

2009-03-31T21:57:00.003+05:00

I went to one of the Pizza Hut restaurants a couple of nights ago after a very long time. I was amazed to see how much they have grown in terms of business and customers, as the new restaurant I went to was huge and completely jammed pack.

Another thing that I saw growing (and jam packed) were the salads. I am sure all Karachiites reading this would know what I am talking about: people walking to the salad bars came back with plates heaped so high so as to give Mount Vesuvius some competition. Some plates looked like Aztec pyramids, while others looked like an orangutan would jump out from them any moment. People stack those salads so high that the plates would probably break if someone breathed on them. I believe each of the salad plate I saw could easily feed a whole village in Botswana; for twenty days! I actually heard of a research that some scientists are conducting on such salad stacking because they believe the same principles can be used to get rid of the world's garbage problem*, if they can learn to stack it so high and compact.

Yet, the higher the stacks of salads, the lower the standard of quality maintained at the restaurant. The service has fallen, most of the waiters are not trained, and it seemed like the management was having a very hard time serving so many customers at once. People incessantly demanded forks, knives, and ketchup so that they can start eating their pizzas and it seemed like the restaurant just did not have enough forks, knives, or ketchup** for every customer. Even if they did, the movements of the waiter was continuously being hindered by the movements of several large structures, ala the salad crescendos. I sat there and ate my pizza with my hand, the way it should be eaten, not with knives, forks, and/or ketchup, and looked at the fiasco that they are now calling Pizza Hut.

* not really

**Ketchup is probably the number-one selling condiment in Pakistan. People like to eat ketchup here with their French fries, fried chicken, pakoras***, samosas****, patties, sandwiches, burgers, steaks, egg fried rice, pizzas, and pretty much everything else that does not require a chapatti to eat with. People just can’t get enough of ketchup.

*** fried onions/potatoes/eggplant/green chili pepper in a flour batter

**** pastry stuffed with beef/lentil/potatoes

Friday and February the 13th

2009-02-13T20:25:00.003+05:00

This is kind of cool, funny, ironic, and interesting all at the same time. It's Friday the 13th today and just a day before February the 14th.

Love and Luck collide at midnight tonight.

And We're Back

2008-10-31T23:31:00.004+06:00

I thought I had entered the-Twilight-Zone/Star-Trek-time-warp and was in a five-month dream where everyone in Pakistan had set their clocks ahead an hour, the dollar and petrol/liter were in the Rs. 80's, the stock markets of the world had crashed, I had stopped writing my blog, and Asif Ali Zardari was the President of Pakistan. Then I realized that midnight has come and gone to come again, it's still October, and we are back in normal time.

What time is it?

2008-06-02T15:22:00.001+06:00

Welcome to June 2nd, or is it still yesterday?

It takes time, or rather the lack, or was it more, to see things through. Imagine the plight of a simpleton, who takes and eats for granted what "it is" that is given to him. Forget about him thinking about how long it's going to take him to even simply, for only the sake of finishing what you have started, in what possibly might be the wholly most ridiculous way of proving the point, which is neither a tomb nor en ambassy, be just exactly what I was trying to tell you in the first place, and yea, that it takes a while to get through all of this, and pfft... you wanna make him 'deliberately' set his watch/clock ahead an hour so that he ends up losing one hour (1 hour) of his life?

And then explain all of the above to yourselves.

Daylight saving is no big deal.

Yet, we, in Karachi, simply cannot fail to understand it. Give me my hour back! I want to watch "who want's to you be a millionaire at 9, not 10!"!

That was a few years ago.

Today, it's "who is smarter than a 5th grader?"

Your Ad Goes Here

2008-04-24T04:23:00.001+05:00

I have a question for everybody: Which one hair of Iman Ali is telling her story? I really want to know. This question came to my mind after seeing the new Sunsilk campaign, which says that life can't wait and blatantly displays a quote by Iman Ali: 'My Hair Tells My Story.' If all her hair were telling her story then she would have said: 'My Hair Tell My Story.' But, since it’s 'tells,' I would really like to know exactly which one of her hair is telling it. Another thing that this ad has done is that it has strengthened by long-held belief that all the advertising agencies of Pakistan are full of people like my friend, the Alid. (For more information on who he is, please read my previous blog entry at http://habitsandpasttimes.blogspot.com/2008/01/life-and-non-murder-of-my-friend.html). And not just advertising agencies, but also these large and supposedly hip multinational FMCG corporations like Unilever. I know that the ad agency made the mistake but Unilever ultimately approved it so they are the ones who are actually at fault. I can't believe that they have all these rigorous recruitment processes: testing, interviewing, re-interviewing, re-re-interviewing, holding group discussions, psychologically profiling the applicants, so on and on and on, and they still ultimately end up hiring a monkey who can't spell.

I have displayed my distaste for advertisements many times and this seems to surprise many people because I am a graduate with a degree in marketing, and people cannot seem to fathom the fact that I of all the people would despise advertising so much. The truth is that I do; ads really irritate it me on some sort of a very human level. I find them to be irritants, ads invasion into my privacy. When I sit down in front of the television to watch a movie, that is all I want to watch: the movie. Not TVCs interrupting me every fifteen minutes and I certainly don't want to watch my movie enclosed in a broad outline of scrolls and logos. Ads are perhaps the main reason why I have actually stopped watching any kind of television at all. I would rather watch a 'watchable without subtitles' DVD than movies on Star Movies or HBO. But you can't hide from ads. They are everywhere. On billboards, blaring out of radios, painted on the side of bridges, on walls, buildings, trucks, vans (especially those new vans whose sole purpose is to waste gas and display those damn well lit backlit signs), buses, cars, poles, sidewalks, traffic lights, and lamppost. If they had their way, those damn advertisers would slap an ad on damn near anything with enough space on it. I know. I have worked in a media planning/buying agency and one of the most popular activities there would be for us to sit together and brainstorm on new and 'creative' ways of displaying ads to the target audience.

When I had first gotten that job, I was very excited and I told my father that I am going to work in a media planning and buying house. He asked me what that was. And when I explained it all, he said, 'Oh, so you will be working in advertising.' That really infuriated me, for I did not want to work in advertising. I went at great lengths and actually fought with my father and explained to him how media buying and planning is NOT advertising. After a heated discussion and argument that went on for a full hour, my father says to me, 'So, it's basically advertising, right?' From that day on, I made it a point to tell everyone that my line of work was NOT advertising, but placement of the ads. I was adamant and stubborn, and I would argue and fight and never admit that it was the same as advertising. It took me only a few weeks of working there when I realized that it pretty damn much WAS advertising. I hated to think that even though I did not make the ads, I was the one responsible for making people see them. I was the intruder here, doing unto others that which I sure hell did not want them do unto me. I quit my job, I realized what was wrong, still stick to my self-developed maxim: Creativity Should Never be a Nuisance.

This also has a connection with my Irony is Sometimes Perfect clause that I have drawn up. I know a guy who used to work for an online writing company. His job would be to select articles from the web and paraphrase them in his own words so as to avoid plagiarism. He was a very creative guy, perhaps too creative. He got fired for plagiarizing when he paraphrased an article that was already paraphrased and inadvertently changed it back into exactly its original form.

An End That is Not Beginning

2008-04-04T03:03:00.001+05:00

It's funny (and perhaps sad too) that my life has become nothing more than just routine weekdays during which I long for my routine weekends. Ever since I take that first step into my car on a Monday morning, I start thinking about how many days are left till Friday when this week ends and the weekend begins. All through the week I have a subconscious countdown counting down the hours left until I make that final departure from my office building to end the week and begin the weekend. I think weekends are great. First of all, they are perhaps the only ends that actually have their own beginnings. And then I get two days off to sleep as late as I can, hang out late with my friends, and watch movies into the late nights until I fall asleep. I look forward to doing all these things throughout the week and never actually end up doing them over the weekend because something or the other other than something is happening. But that's ok because I still get those two days off of work, to which (have I mentioned it before?) I look forward to throughout the whole week.

So, you can well imagine my state of mind now that I have been working for 11 days straight without a single day off. Yes, all my dreams of enjoying my weekend last week were mangled, pulverized, rent, riven, ruptured, shredded, shattered, and smashed when I found out that I would have to work on Saturday and Sunday. Today is my 11th day at work without a break and it has been the longest week of my life.

Anyhow, my woes aside, have you all seen the new Rs. 20 banknote? I was under the impression that a new note was needed because many people were giving out Rs. 5000 notes to buy Rs. 5 worth of mint. This was because the new Rs. 5000 note looked very much like the now-old-but-the-then-new Rs. 20 note. I happened to perchance (yes, perchance) upon the new Rs. 20 today, and mazharfakhar (yes, mazharfakhar), it looks even more like the Rs. 5000 note than it did before! It's actually the same note, only they have changed the colors and added some fluorescent green here and a little 'peekish' red here. It now looks like a Rs. 5000 note that just came out of a bag of cotton candy.

My 'Free' Gift to Myself (Only for Customers in Pakistan)

2008-03-13T11:59:00.001+05:00

I am out of cash so I go to the ATM machine. I put my card in, punch in my secret code, and then the amount. The machine processes my request, spits out my card, and I hear that whirring sound that precludes the arrival of bank notes. I am expecting the cash to come out at any second, but, as KESC would have it, the electricity gets cut off, and the ATM machine shuts down. It goes completely dead.

So, there I am, standing with no cash, and an ATM machine with no power. I go into the bank, and find out that it is not a bank at all, just a convenient ATM nook in the busy market. A peon finally shows up and then disappears for another ten minutes to go turn on the generator. I wait for a while for the ATM machine to boot up, which it finally does after 15 minutes, and still no cash. I call up my bank and they tell me that the cash amount has been charged to my account. I assure them that I have not been paid, and they tell me to go sign a contest form at my bank's branch.

I go to my bank and sign that contest form. My bank tells me that since I was using an ATM of another bank, I would probably have to wait another 15-20 days for the cash to be reversed into my account.

I go home and order some books for myself from Amazon.com for the same amount that I just lost in the ATM machine. Amazon.com tells me that my books will be delivered within the next 15-20 days.

So, in the next 15-20 days, I will get my books, and also the money back that I used to pay for them, completing the illusion that I got the books for 'free.'

Note to all: This 'scam' can only work in Pakistan and is a product of our prestigious award system also known as load shedding.

Video Kills the Radio Star

2008-03-11T03:33:00.001+05:00

Have you seen the big screen super LCD television screen that they have put up on Shahra-e-Faisal right in front of the Regent Plaza? Man it's bright! I would love to tell you what it was showing but I can't. I saw it last night only for a millisecond but then I had to look away because the brightness burnt my retinas, rendering me completely blind for the next few seconds. I am going to take a better look at it tonight, as I am going to be prepared wearing my extra-dark sunglasses.

The thing that I find extremely funny is that there is a strict ban being especially enforced on Shahra-e-Faisal, where cops give you a ticket for talking on your cell phones while driving your car. But apparently watching big screen television while driving poses no real threat and its a-okay.

I think the RJs have finally found their match.

Radio Ga Ga

2008-03-04T23:10:00.001+05:00

A lot has changed in Karachi over the past ten or eleven years, but the two things that have really changed a lot are cell phones and FM radio. I remember that a up until a few years ago there was only 1 FM channel, FM100, bidding Asalamwalikum to Pakistan (Karachi, Lahore, Izzlamabad), and cell phones were big and rare. Cell phones used to be a status symbol rather than a necessity that they have become today. Only the rich (because the phones and their services were so expensive) and the muscular (because the cell phones were so big that they required their own carrying cases) could afford (and carry) cell phones. This was the time when people would pretend to talk on fake cell phones in their cars to show off that they were rich (and strong) enough to own a cell phone. Things have changed now because there are way too many people with way too many cell phones and also mostly because people now avoid talking on the phone while in their cars because it is very much likely that if you are seen using your cell phone in public, someone is going to come up to your car, tap his gun on your window, and make with your cell phone.

There are also way too many FM radio channels broadcasting way too many advertisements being played by way too many idiotic radio jockeys, many of whom sound not only like they have just flown into the radio station straight from Toronto but also that they spent all their lives there fraternizing with gangster rappers. They have these weird accents, a weirder lingo, and can absolutely talk some real trash. For instance, have you noticed how these RJs suddenly become experts at giving relationship, political, environmental, health etc advice as soon as they start blabbering in front of their microphones? Of course, I am not talking about ALL the RJs on the many FM radio stations; I actually happen to even like some of them when they are not actually talking and are more concerned with just playing songs. The worse of these creatures are those full of bubbly excitement and high-pitched crackling voices who think that the radio airwave is their own private teenage high school pajama party. These are the ones who have given me such ‘expert’ advice on how to live a happier life by waking up at 6:00am on a Sunday morning and opening up my curtains to ‘embrace’ the rising sun; how to get into the ‘weekend party mood’ by listening to trance songs during lunch time on Thursday afternoons; how to make my girlfriend love me by giving her flowers, cakes, chocolates, balloons, and teddy bears, all ordered through the TCS Sentimental Express; and of course, how to win back my girlfriend who already loved me but is now leaving me because I sent a pink courier truck to her house.

Having a cell phone handy has also affected my life in many ways. I remember when I was in my A-Level’s and our class had to arrange a picnic on a Sunday, all the plans had to be finalized by Friday afternoon. Everyone had to know exactly where to be at exactly the right time and exactly who all was to bring the food, chips, beach ball, etc a day before the actual event because no one had cell phones and last minute plans were unheard of. Boys and girls had a very hard time talking on the phone because many of the girls had strictly forbidden the boys to call them at their home numbers and most of the talking took place at night when the parents were asleep. People used to spend a lot of stressful times in restaurants thinking up until the second that their significant others showed up whether they were going to show up at all or if they had come to the wrong restaurant at the wrong time. Some of the most embarrassing of times were when you returned home late to find that your mom has been calling ALL your friends’ moms in trying to find out where you have been all night. Things were very different and analogue then. The kids of today would probably wonder how anything ever got done without cell phones, but they did; everything did get done. We were all still able to find each other in this same big city, and we were all able to pull off all kinds of plans.

Cell phones have come and changed everything. I seriously think that cell phones have worked to make us even more stupid as a human race than we were before. Now, no one is quite sure of what ‘the scene’ is until the last minute. We leave our homes to go to a party without even knowing where we are headed, thinking that we will call on the way and figure out where we have to go. We hardly ever know anyone else’s phone number as we are so used to dialing ‘names’ instead of ‘numbers.’ Many people have become so stupid that they don’t even know their own cell phone numbers and they have to refer to their saved number on their phones to tell you what their number is. Radio jockeys can now read every little thought that comes into their audiences’ minds through the SMS’ that they receive in between all the advertisements, promos, and time checks, and I find it a miracle that they are still able to squeeze in half a song every hour (which of course is interrupted midway by a time-check). I think that time-checks are the worst. They very rudely interrupt songs (especially if it’s a song that you love and have been waiting to hear on the radio for the past hour that you have been stuck in traffic talking to your girlfriend on the speakerphone trying to explain to her why there is a pink truck with flowers on it standing in front of her house) to tell you what time it is (even though you know perfectly well what time it is) and they never continue or replay the song after the stupid time-check is over. We ALL have watches on our wrists, clocks in our cars or in our cell phones. We DON’T need the radio stations telling us every fifteen minutes what time it is. And we definitely don’t need idiotic RJs telling us what to do and how to live our lives. In the same vein as cell phones making us stupid, I think the longer that you are an RJ, the more stupid you become as well. Why do I say that? Consider the words that I heard come out the radio while driving home last night:

‘Oh my god! My peeps! Holla and welcome back to ‘The Drive Back Home Show,’ the deliciously dandy show that is especially designed for all you exec-type-peepals driving back home after a hard day’s work at the office! What’s up my dawgs?! Yo, yo, yo, so keep tuned in da house for some latest tips on how to score buttons by trading in your beetens (whatever the hell that meant). For all our fabulous listeners out there listening to our fabulous show and driving their fabulous bums back home, today’s topic is about driver safety while driving your car. First things first my hommies: do not use your cell phones while driving your cars. It is extremely distracting and dangerous and many accidents have been caused because of distracted drivers who were too busy talking on their cell phones while driving their cars. So, all of you driving home back from work right now, do let us know what your thoughts are on this topic. Use those cell phones and call us at blah blah blah, or SMS us at blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah.’

I rest my case.

From YouTube Till Telecom

2008-03-03T11:01:00.001+05:00

So, that didn’t last long, this ban on YouTube. The funniest thing about this was how the Pakistani software engineers were able to mess up YouTube globally without even knowing what they were doing or what their actions might have beget. You might well imagine the surprise those people up there at YouTube must have got when they saw that some Telecom guy from Pakistan had ended up bringing the site down without even knowing what he was actually doing. What that one Pakistani was able to pull off was something that no other hacker had even thought about doing. It was by sheer stupidity and dumb luck of the blonde (who in this case turns out to be a Pakistani brunette, a man, and not just dumb but completely deaf, blind, armless, legless, and bald as well) that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority was able to bring YouTube down globally for a few hours. I am not sure of the technical details of how he were able to do that but some of my developer friends have told me that this kind of a cyber attack is unheard of simply because it is unthinkable that someone would even try this kind of a hijack. You ever hear of that saying about grabbing your nose in different ways, where you can either grab the nose simply by pinching it with your right arm in front of your face or you can pinch it by taking your right arm, twisting it around from the back of your head and holding your nose from the left side of your face? Basically, this means that there is a simple way of doing things and a roundabout way, which no one really does because it is just too awkward. In this case, Pakistan Telecom did the awkward part, holding the nose from the wrong side, only this time, instead of the nose they got the kidney.

What Not to Wear While Having a Heart Attack

2008-02-27T02:01:00.001+05:00

I recently received an email about what to do if you think you are having a heart attack. According to this email, if someone is alone and starts feeling a tightness in the chest area, a sharp pain in the left arm that radiates into the jaw, and a general numbness of the whole left body, one should immediately start coughing vigorously, taking deep breaths amidst the long, deep coughs. This, supposedly, allows the blood vessels and the arteries in the heart to swell up while coughing and decreases the chances of an actual heart attack from taking place. The email advises that the patient keep coughing patiently until an ambulance arrives or he/she is taken to a hospital.

A quick search on Google quickly confirmed that this was nothing but a hoax. However, this did not stop my friend* from making a perfect fool out of himself yet again. He was on his way home after a hectic day at work and he suddenly started feeling a sharp pain in his chest that traveled up his left arm into his left jaw. He panicked, thought he was having a heart attack and started coughing like a madman. Surprisingly enough, his heart did get better, but, unfortunately, he coughed himself to death. It turned out that the pain was not even heart related and that his 'banyan**' was just too damned tight.

*When I say friend I actually mean a random fictional character that I have just created on the spur of this moment.

**And when I say 'banyan' I can also mean a T-shirt.

From Dust Till YouTube

2008-02-25T12:11:00.001+05:00

I wonder if the two-day dust cloud that hung over Karachi had anything to do with YouTube being banned in Pakistan. I really don't see any connection, but you never know. It's funny how the late Abdullah Shah Ghazi have been able to thwart other potential disasters but he didn't see this one coming. Not the dust cloud, the banning of YouTube. What's next, I wonder. Google?

I just wanted to make this post to tell my readers from Pakiland that they can still view YouTube through an online proxy. Simply go to http://vtunnel.com/ ignore the ad banner on your left, enter http://youtube.com/ where it says http://www.Gmail.com/ in the address bar above the button marked 'Begin browsing,' and begin browsing YouTube.

The Importance of Voting and Wearing a 'Banyan'

2008-02-21T00:11:00.001+05:00

February 2008 saw two important things come to an end in Karachi. One has been the end of a lot of tension and quandary surrounding the 'down-went' Elections 2008 (mostly because the elections have now ended amidst minimal incidences of violence and a countenance of fairness), and the other has been the end of an unexpected wave of prolonged winter.

The elections are finally over and everyone has relieved a sigh that we had all breathed in after December 27, 2007. The last couple of weeks were the worse with bombs going off in many parts of the country and an expectation that something horrible was brewing to go off in Karachi at any time. There were rumors of every thing going wrong on and before election day with people at home watching the renewed Geo News for some sensationalized excitement (or an excitable sensation depending upon which way you swing) or Dawn News for those wanting to see the English language screaming 'naheen! naheen!' running with arms stretched, 'dupatta'* fluttering in the air behind her as heavily accented male anchors on female horses run in full pursuit (thank you, Khaver, for the imagery); people at work checking and rechecking geo.tv or dawn.com every 15 minutes so that they can run home at the slightest inclination of any thing gone wrong; people on the streets anticipating this car, that motorcycle, this bicycle, that rickshaw, this bus, that truck, this tanker, that van, this eighteen-wheeler, that twenty-two-wheeler, this donkey cart, that cow, or those pedestrians to blow up; people who reached home after work and being on the street watching Geo News or Dawn News, etc, etc; you get the point. But nothing happened in Karachi (and thank god for that) and the elections got over as peacefully as unexpected.

Another thing that is over is the unexpectedly long wave of cold weather that hit Karachi this winter. This is perhaps the first time in my life that I felt so cold in Karachi. Karachi is in the temperate zone and we usually don't get sweater-or-jacket-worthy winters and people are usually fine just wearing a 'banyan'** but this year was an exception. Many people were seen wearing sweaters, coats, jackets, overcoats, gloves, scarves (the ones that go one your neck not on women's heads), and of course 'banyans' underneath their shirts. Many people were also seen sweaters, coats, jackets, overcoats, gloves, and scarves without the 'banyans' and we all know that that is not going to do anything, for the 'banyan' is a very important article of clothing in winters and it is absolutely necessary to wear under your shirt if you are to trap the heat in and keep yourself warm. Anyhow, summer is at our doorstep and winter is out the door, leaving behind the house with no electricity, UPSs whose batteries are dead, and generators with cables that are without plugs and tanks that are without fuel. Yes, people of Karachi, you have all witnessed excessive loadshedding even through the coldest of times this year and truth be told it gives me the most inconvenient of heebie jeebies just thinking of what will happen in summer-time. If Al Gore is right (and it's most inconveniently likely that he be telling the truth), it's going to be very hot in the summers simply because it was very cold in the winters. I am guessing that we will be getting the privilege of receiving electricity for not more than a few minutes every twenty-four hours, and it's going to be time soon to get rid of the 'banyans' and to bring out the 'chaddees.'***

*a 'dupatta' is a long, flowing, and usually a colorful piece of cloth used by the women of Pakistan to cover their bosoms and heads. This is not to be confused with the 'abaya' or the 'hijab,' which are headscarves, nor with the 'burqa,' which is a full-bodied ninja suit.

** a 'banyan' is a white cotton vest worn beneath shirts and usually made by Mercury, a Pakistani brand that specializes in male undergarments.

*** a 'chaddee' can be many things (including a long drive in someone else's car), but it mostly refers to a variety of shorts, knickers, briefs, Bermudas, or Spandex, all depending upon which way you swing.

Of Red Not Love

2008-02-16T00:05:00.001+05:00

Valentine's Day is the most meaningless of all non-holidays.

First of all, it has nothing to do with us, the people of Karachi, Pakistan, or even Asia. It's a Roman holiday named after some Roman saints called Valentine, and if we are so keen on celebrating this particular holiday, we might as well go ahead and celebrate other Roman holidays like Quinquatrus Day, or Agonia Day (which was observed by sacrificing victims on the seven hills of Rome), or Parilia Day (which honors the pastoral goddess Pales, and is observed by driving sheep through burning straw), or Fordicidia Day (which honors Tellus, Goddess of Earth, and is observed by slaughtering pregnant cows, taking the unborn calves from the womb, and burning them in order to insure fertility for the growing corn).

Secondly, and most importantly, Valentine's Day has got nothing to do with love either. Truth be told, all the red that you see on Valentine's Day shows more of an association with the blood of the martyr saints rather than being the color of love and passion. Yes, that's right, blood. The 'Valentine' in Valentine's Day refers to at least three Roman saints of ancient Rome, all of whom were painfully tortured before they were brutally slain for their 'heretic' behavior and for holding ambitious religious beliefs. Their deaths had nothing to do with 'love' or any other idea remotely related with 'love.' They never preached the lesson of 'love,' never told anyone about 'love,' did not have any idea what 'love' was, and they sure in hell did not die for 'love.' It is just funny to think that many years later people would end up celebrating a feast of love in their name when I am willing to bet my pot on the fact that these Valentine fellows had never even heard of the word 'love' in all of their lives. They gave up their lives and spilled their blood for their convictions and we use it to paint our towns red every year for ours.

There was a lot of uncalled for 'redness' last night in Karachi, so much so that I actually ended up getting sick. Couples and transvestites wearing matching red clothes, restaurants all laden up in their red themes of red hearts and red balloons, I even saw one of those 'hari-topi-walay mullahs' (the-green-hat-wearing-holy-men) wearing a red-topi this time! I went to Nandos last night with my cousins and it felt like I had entered the set of a cheap, slasher, teenage horror flick that takes place in an underground butchery. It was so red in there that I actually started hallucinating that red spiders were crawling down my red back. The lights were wrapped in red cellophane, there were red balloons inside, and the glass was painted with red hearts. The waiters, the chicken, the pita bread, even the peri-peri sauce were all red. A guy named 'Laal' also came to my house to collect a bill that I had forgotten to pay to him earlier. It was insane, I tell you. And to think all this happened in the name of love.

I don't think love even exists. And don't think I am just saying that in some deep, dark, philosophical, metaphysical, abstract, sagacious, oh-I-have-loved-and-lost-and-I-have-become-a-complete-cynic, deep, dark kind of a way. I have scientific and mathematical proof that love really does not exist.

Ok, so everyone knows that any number divided by infinity is zero, right? Keep that in mind. Now the population of our world is estimated to be 6,649,117,969 (six billion, six hundred and forty nine million, one hundred and seventeen thousand, nine hundred and sixty nine) people. There is 1 planet capable of sustaining life in our solar system (for my Martian readers, it is the Earth, of course), an estimated 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) solar systems in our galaxy alone, and an infinite number of galaxies in our universe, which means that there are an infinite number of planets as well (since anything multiplied by infinity is also infinity). Even if everyone on Earth projects 'love' to even 100 people in their lifetime (which is an extremely generous estimate), we will have 664,911,796,900 (six hundred and sixty four billion, nine hundred and eleven million, seven hundred and ninety six thousand, and nine hundred) 'packets' of love. Divide that by the infinite number of planets in this universe, gives us that magical number zero (since anything divided by infinity is zero). Hence, love does not exist, at least not in our universe; quod erat demonstrandum.

To Buy or Not to Buy, that is the DVD

2008-02-07T06:55:00.001+05:00

Living in Karachi can be quite frustrating for various reasons. Most of these reasons were listed in an article published in the Economist a few months ago that branded Karachi as the '4th most unlivable cities in the world.' This was due to problems related to Karachi's shortfalls in healthcare, education, sanitation, infrastructure, traffic congestion, not being able to handle its own weather, crime, terrorism, overall bad city planning, and a near-perpetual energy crisis. I got very sad and depressed after reading this article not only because I found out that I was living in the 4th most unlivable cities in the world but also because I found out so many things that I always knew were wrong here but was too naive to realize.

Yet, there are these little things in life that give solace to living here. I can list thousands but one of the most enlivening things, one which most of us take for granted, is the price and availability of movies on DVDs. Here in Karachi you can find an almost complete collection of all the Indian and English movies in many stores throughout the city for as little as Rs. 49 for a DVD. And there are a few stores that also sell Pakistani movies. However, even a simple act of going and buying a DVD can become a very hard decision given the many different types of 'movie prints' that each film is released on.

Let me explain: The first type of print that is released is the 'Camera' print. This print is 'produced' when a person takes a camera into the theater and films what is happening on the screen. Many movie store owners here also define this as a 'Watchable' print, although there is nothing 'watchable' about it (unless you are keen on watching shadows of people's heads sitting in the rows ahead and hear an occasional cough, babies crying, and people laughing). I guess the only people who like to watch this print are those who want to experience going to the theater while sitting in their living room. This is the worst print that you can get of a movie, but its also the one that comes out within hours of the theatrical releases.

Another print is called the 'Screener.' This is a decent print but it is mostly accompanied by a counter placed in the middle of the screen that is continuously ticking away numbers that really don't make any sense. This 'Screener' is the print that is given out by the production companies for screening purposes to award giving academies or censorship boards and its usually out even days before the movie is actually released in theaters. The video quality can range from being excellent to very good, but there are usually very blatant sound problems, such as the background noise being the main sound and the important dialogues that become background noise.

There is another print, called 'A Very Good Demo,' which I have not been able to understand as of yet. I think that they get this print by recording the movie direct from A/V out of the projector in the theaters. This is also a good-enough print but I have serious problems with it because it has some formatting issues and can ruin the whole experience of watching movies. Some of my friends are really keen on getting this print and they even enjoy it a lot, but I prefer not to watch them and wait for the movie to come out in the 'Master' print.

A 'Master' print is a pirated copy of the movie from its original DVD release. This is the best print that you can get and includes all the features that you would find on an original DVD, including subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Chinese etc. It may or may not contain the 'special features' section, but that really does not matter. The only problem with watching movies on this print is that by the time the movie gets out in this format, most of your friends have already seen it on either the 'Camera,' 'Screener,' or 'Demo' print (which for me are all 'Unwatchables').

Each movie comes out in each of the above explained prints and add to that is the new technology driven world of torrents and what-not. Many of the store owners make a complete fool out of you by downloading the movies off the net and then burning them on a cheap DVD. The result is that you get to watch a 'Compressed' print that is very pixilated and looks more like a VCD than a DVD.

So, keeping in mind all of the above, a typical conversation that occurs at a movie store goes something like this:

'Is "There Will be Blood" out?'

'Yes sir, its a 'Very Good Demo.''

'No 'Master?''

'No, but this is a 'Very Good Demo.'

'Is it watchable?'

'No. It's better than a 'Watchable.' Its a 'Very Good Demo.'

'Ok. I don't understand what that means, but ok. How about 'No Country for Old Men?''

'Yes its out. 'Master' print. But without the subtitles.'

'Does it mean that it's a 'Screener?'

'No. It's a 'Master' print. But no subtitles.'

'So this is watchable, then?'

'No no. It's not a 'Watchable.' It's a 'Master Without Subtitles*.'

'So, it's a 'Master Without Subtitles' and its unwatchable?'

'I don't know what that means, but ok.'

That's when my friend buys the 'Very Good Demo' print of 'There Will be Blood' and I get the 'Master Without Subtitles' for 'No Country for Old Men.' My friend does not buy 'No Country...' because he has already seen it in a 'Screener' print that was, for him, watchable, but for the movie store owner was, of course, better than a 'Watchable.'

*I did not mention this in my descriptions of the various prints because I had no idea that such a print existed before having the conversation at the movie store.

The Asteroid That Came and is Still Here

2008-01-29T22:34:00.005+05:00

So, my favorite asteroid 2007 TU24 has passed us by and nothing really happened. No firestorms erupted, no light show, no sudden shifts in the weather, no plasma power surges, and definitely no hard disks were wiped clean. But we all already knew that, didn't we?

Actually, the asteroid is still here. It can still be seen, not with a naked eye, of course, but you just might be able to see it if your eye was fully clothed*. It is pretty far away so it's following a languid arc through our sky and it's going to take it another couple of days to completely saunter out of our line of sight. So, if it were likely to cause the destruction and mayhem that many people had been so hyper about, we would have started seeing the effects a few days earlier.

But you got to admit: those of you who read my last post and did not know about the asteroid went ahead and googled it, right? I know for sure that at least one of you did. And it was scary, wasn't it? What if the asteroid had actually hit Earth? What if it did wipe out all the hard disks in the world? Can you imagine what that would do to our civilization? I think that maybe it won't be such a bad thing after all. Maybe an external threat common to the whole world might nudge us to drop our petty differences amongst each other and learn to live in peace and harmony. But the problem with us is that we get distracted too easily, and we tend to forget disasters too quickly. Our distraction comes from the trivialities of life, such as food, and we forget about what is more important in an instant. The riots following BB's assassination distracted us from Guljee's murder and crippled Karachi, but we have forgotten about both these events and are now carrying on with the same routine life that we had before. In this vein, one cannot help but wonder how we would take the news of such mind bogglingly large and impending doom lurking on our heads. Would the whole world unite for the first time in history to combat a common... hey my pizza is here! I haven't eaten all day. I am so hungry. So, what was I talking about?

*This is just a joke. Please don't force your eyes to wear a suit . Use a telescope instead. It's easier and you won't blind yourself trying to zip up a cornea.

No Peeking Please, We Are Pakistani

2008-01-28T08:50:00.001+05:00

I made a post earlier about the internecion of the English language that happens in Karachi and other parts of Pakistan. Shiraz made some comments about how there are many words in Urdu that are gross approximations of some English words and how, say, 'knickers' becomes 'nayker' and 'pliers' becomes 'plaas.' I agree with him in that there are many words in Urdu that are 'borrowed' from English. Actually, the Urdu language is the bastard child of a rather bacchanalian copulation between Hindi, Persian, Arabic, many of the Turkic languages, and English. The English influence, of course, comes from the English who ruled over the sub-continent unofficially for 300+ years (officially 89 years). And since the English language itself is a mongrel product of various Germanic languages including Yiddish, Afrikaans, many of the Frisian languages, and Dutch, it also makes Kirna right when she says that many languages overlap.

This overlapping of languages became daftly apparent to me today when I saw a sign that said: 'no smoking, no eating paan, and please, no peeking.' For those of my readers who do not know what this means, the term 'peek maarna' is an expression in Urdu and it describes the act of chewing betel nuts, catechu, lime paste all wrapped in betel leaves and then spitting them all out in a long, red stream onto any wall or corner that you are closest to. For my readers who don't know English, the term 'peeking' denotes the act of looking or peering furtively as from a place of concealment. I am not trying to be condescending here, but kAy and Khaver would appreciate why I say that seeing the 'no peeking' sign I got thoroughly confused and its exact meaning is still lost upon me.

That's when the idea for this post came to me and I said to myself, 'why not? We, the Karachiites, are, after all, Masters of the Universe. Where else would you find people who wear 'Mercury' branded underwear, work in 'Venus' Distributors, who take their cars to 'Atlas' Honda, hire guards from 'Mars' Security Services, put 'Jupiter' CPEs near their windows, and buy their fish from 'Neptune' Fisheries. Only in Karachi can people buy gin from 'Moon,' take credit from 'Crescent' Commercial Bank, order garments from 'Star' Textiles, avail the UBL 'Orion' mobile phone banking, go for a picnic at 'Paradise' Point, exchange currency at the 'Glaxy' Money Exchange Company, and buy a laptop from 'Glaxy' Computers.

And this brings me to the real reason I wanted to make this post today because come tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday January 29, 2008), an asteroid called 2007 TU24 is going to rendezvous with Earth's magnetosphere. It's the first time that we are going to be able to witness and record such a phenomenon and no one is really sure what's going to happen. There are predictions of firestorms and light shows in the sky, unpredictable weather, and a power surge that can wipe out all the hard disks in the world. Most of these theories seem kind of crack potted and out there to me, and the only thing that everyone seems to be very sure of is that no one is sure what's going to happen. Asteroid 2007 TU24 is expected to be closest to earth at 1:33 pm Pakistan Standard Time.

The suspense is killing me!

The Life and Non-Murder of my Friend

2008-01-24T09:17:00.001+05:00

I have a friend who used to live in Karachi, but has now shifted north to Islamabad. This friend has been a source of great entertainment for me and the rest of my friends. It's not because he is a comedian or a joke maker; he is an ignoramus simpleton who has kept us laughing our asses off for showing us some of the world's funniest moments. I don't want to divulge his name for the sake of protecting his identity, and let's just, for the sake of this conversation, call him Alid.

The first time I met Alid was when I was in class 7 or 8 and the first time I spoke to him was in class 10. We were in our O'Levels and it was traditional for the juniors to arrange a farewell party for their seniors. I had recently started playing the guitar and I thought it would be nice to play a song for our graduating class at our farewell party. I asked around to find out if anyone else knew anything about playing songs and I found that another guy (let's just arbitrarily call him Kumail) also knew how to strum a few chords. 'Perfect,' I remember thinking, 'now all we need is a singer and we are set.' That's when Alid stepped up and said, 'yes, I can sing.'

Now you have to remember that I was around 16 years old at the time. I was quite naive and took most of what was said to me at face value. I did not doubt it when Kumail told me that he knew how to play the guitar, and I did not doubt Alid when he said he could sing. At the time, I had no idea that to sing meant to actually throw your voice in tune and in time. Just as I had learnt to play the guitar, I simply assumed that Alid knew how to sing. That was a grave mistake because I soon found out that Alid did not really know how to sing at all. He just said he could sing because he had also simply assumed he could. You can imagine how bad he sounded when he sang by the fact that (and honest to god I am not joking) we were boo-ed off the stage five minutes before we had even started to play the song.

Fast forward a couple of years and it’s the new era of the Internet and MIRC. Another friend of mine, lets call him Danial, and I are online from Tempe, AZ, sitting in #delusions, and we find that Alid has been killed, shot dead during a fight in Karachi. Now this was the time when cell phones were the size of cricket bats and you had to be either a drug lord, a respected businessman, or both, to be able to afford them. And Alid was no drug lord nor a respected businessman and the last time he had played cricket he had fallen asleep on the field during the match while wicket keeping because (swear to god I am not joking) he had mistakenly eaten a bunch of Valiums thinking they were Panadols. So we call his home phone (what is now called a landline), and Alid's mother picks up. We are unsure as to what to say, but are relieved when she tells us that Alid has just stepped out to buy a pack of Marlboro Mediums. Fast forward another few years and its the new era of electronic music and MSN. We are all sitting in Danial's room in Karachi and Alid is also there. That's when Danial remembers the Alid Murder Incident and we tell Alid that we had heard he got murdered a few years ago and we want to know why the rumor began and what actually happened. To this, the first thing Alid said was, 'nahi yaar, woh mera murder nahi hoowa tha.' ('No man, I was not the one who was murdered').

It was then that we realized that Alid had a tendency to say the most inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times. And it was not much later that we found that he once told his online girlfriend, 'my love for you is like the Titanic,' to which the girl replied, 'oh, but didn't the Titanic sink?' He is the same person who we once found carrying around a lit candle in the dark (the lights were out because of load 'shading') and searching for a lighter to light his cigarette, and the same person who once described an electronica song (and again I swear to god I am not joking) as being ‘deep, dark, progressive, house, trance, deep, dark, house...’

It’s quite sad that our friend Alid has moved from Karachi and is now living (and probably still entertaining people around him) in Islamabad. What does he do for a living, you might wonder? He is a Director Creative for an advertising agency and most of his work involves pressing the F5 button on his computer’s keyboard. And now you know why most of the ads we see on our television screens are like the way they are and why they mostly show people saying the most inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times.

The Left, Right, and Wrong Way

2008-01-22T08:59:00.001+05:00

Anyone who has been a pedestrian at any point in life knows how careful he or she must be while walking on the road. I was in Amsterdam a few years ago and I remember their curious road system. There are various lanes that you have to watch out for if you want to cross the road. The first lane closest to the sidewalk is for bicyclists and skaters, then comes the actual road for the cars, then two tram tracks appear in the middle of the median (one going left and one right), then its cars going the other way, and then another bicyclist lane closest to the other sidewalk. You have to look left and right so many times while crossing their roads that by the time you get to the other side you not only have a terrible pain in your neck, you also tend to forget why you wanted to cross the road in the first place. The pedestrian situation in Karachi is very different and here you would find bicycles and motorcycles on the sidewalk, cars traveling both ways on the same road, some more motorcycles in the bus lanes, buses on the median, and pedestrian everywhere. Only thing similar about crossing a road here in Karachi is that you not only get a sprained neck from looking left and right so much, but you can very easily end up with a broken arm or leg if you are careless enough to forget why you were crossing the road.

Anyone who has ever driven a car at any point in life surely knows how careful he or she must be while driving a car on the road. You have various lanes on the road and the basic idea is to keep your car in the lane and avoid hitting any other vehicles or any pedestrians that are crossing the road. That's very easy to do, say in the USA, where you drive on the right side of the road, the lanes are well defined, and pedestrians only cross the streets if they are at the intersection. Driving in Karachi, the basic idea of driving has to be slightly modified in that you have to keep other cars, motorcycles, bicycles, rickshaws, buses, trucks, tankers, vans, eighteen-wheelers, twenty-two-wheelers, donkey carts, cows, and of course the pedestrians, from hitting your car. It becomes exceedingly difficult to achieve this since you have to drive on the left side of the road, the lanes are well-defined at many places but the people's concept of driving between them is not, and pedestrians, cows, donkey carts, twenty-two-wheelers, eighteen-wheelers, vans, tankers, trucks, buses, rickshaws, bicycles, motorcycles, and cars cross the street anywhere they feel like doing so.

So it is of no surprise that people (both pedestrians and drivers) here in Karachi pay very little or absolutely no attention to signs on the roads (unless of course they are big huge billboards with a very large picture of a girl next to a miniature washing machine). Perhaps it was because of this little detail that when my Karachiite friend came to visit me in New York a few years ago, he called me and told me he was waiting for me to pick him, and I asked him where he was, to which he answered, ‘I am standing next to a DON’T WALK sign,’ I told him, ‘hold on man, I will be right there!’ And you can probably imagine the anxiety and distress my friend went through when, after a few seconds, he saw the sign change to WALK.

A Monkey Named Ginger

2008-01-20T23:09:00.001+05:00

I heard some very interesting 'muhawarays' the other day. For those who don't know Urdu: 'muhawarays' is plural for a 'muhawaraa.' And for those who know Urdu but don't know what a 'muhawaraa' is: its an aphophtegm or an aphorism. For those still baffled: I heard some very interesting 'sayings said in Urdu' the other day. One of them was: 'bandar kya jaanay adrak ka swaad?' which is roughly translated in English as: 'what does the monkey know about savoring ginger?' It didn't make too much sense to me. I mean I get it that it means something like that the monkey is too primitive to really savor the flavor of ginger enough to appreciate it. But why would you want to know how a monkey feels after eating ginger? And what kind of a monkey (or any human being for that matter) would want to savor the flavor of ginger?

Another very interesting thing that I have noticed is the names that people decide to name the buildings that they are building or have already built. For instance, the apartment complex that they have built by the sewerage/drainage is called Lakeview Paradise; there is not a single tower at Park Towers; and 'believe you me,' there is actually a Lahore Grammar School of Karachi. Also, there are so many businesses that have very similar names. Only in Karachi will you find bakeries called Ideal Bakers, Ideal Bakery, New Ideal Bakers, New Ideal Bakery, Bakery Ideal, New Bakery Ideal, New Bakers in Ideal Bakery, and so forth. None of them have any connection with each other except for the words that are common in their names. In Karachi, it is considered good business sense to add the word 'new' before the name of an old business so that people think that since its 'new' it must be better.

I have also noticed that people in Karachi don't take too kindly to humor and satire. Since I have started writing this blog, many people have come up to me to tell me that it's not right for me to write such derogatory things about our beloved city, and that I should stop making fun of Karachi. These same people also ask me, 'what the hell are you writing? Are you trying to be funny? Your blog is so lame.' My response to these people is: 'bandar kya jaanay adrak ka swaad.'

What's the Point?

2008-01-17T13:18:00.002+05:00

There is a very old and firm structure built somewhat in the vicinity of but not nearly so close to the city-side seashore of Karachi (better known as Sea View). This structure that I am talking about has a semi dome, almost elliptical roof, and round pillars that are based out of a raised platform. Made out of Jodhpur stone, this structure shouts out Islamic architecture that was popularized by the Mughals and built mostly by the British. At first sight, it might appear as a mosque, but it’s actually a bandstand that was in regular use many, many years ago. There is an octagonal seat in the center of this structure and if you stand upon it, you can see the old pier, or parade, that leads out towards the ocean. This is the Jehangir Kothari Parade, most of which has been ‘renovated’ to make way for the new park, yet the structure still stands. But that’s beside the point.

There is another building in the same local region, and this was actually built by the British for their own personal use. Funnily enough, this building is located on a road called Shahra-e-Iran (meaning Iran Avenue). The building covers a huge area of prime land in the area of Clifton, and is reputed to have a fully functional pub and club inside. No Pakistani, of course, is allowed to enter unless it’s on official business and even if one of us green passport holders does somehow manage to squeeze inside, he or she won’t be able to use any of the facilities. This is the British High Commission’s office in Clifton, and that’s also beside the point.

The Point is a shopping mall that's besides the Jehangir Kothari Parade and the British High Commission’s office.

The Secret of my 'Healthy' Life

2008-01-16T09:01:00.001+05:00

I used to be very thin until I turned 23. I remember that all the time in my late teens and early twenties, I used to weigh not more than a 120 lbs. And at a height of 5'11 3/4'', that's quite thin. My shoulder bones would stick out of the clothes that I would wear and I could almost wrap my hands around my waist, which used to be somewhere in the vicinity of 25-26 inches, but I would tell everyone that it was 28. I would wear two sometimes even three t-shirts inside my shirt so that I could look a little 'blown up'. People would come up to me and say things like, 'oh my god, you are so thin,' 'don't you eat?' 'are you sick?'

I am now 28, almost 29, and lets just say that I am not thin anymore. My height has remained the same but for some reasons unknown to me, the weighing machine always says 175 lbs whenever I stand on it. My face has become larger and rounder and it has been theorized that I have been attacked by a swarm of African killer bees, thereby the stings, and thus the swelling of the cheeks. My waist is now around 36 but I tell everyone that its actually 34. I end up looking like George on Gore-Tex even if I wear the flimsiest of 'banyans' under my shirt. People now come up to me and say things like, 'oh my god, you have gained weight,' 'what are you eating?' 'are you sick?'

The only upshot of this has been that many of my friends and cousins, who are still thin as a stick, come up to me and ask me the secret of how I have 'become so healthy' all of a sudden. To this, I tell them: 'this is Karachi, dude. Anyone can 'blow up' anywhere, anytime.'

Sorry for the Inconvenient

2008-01-14T12:13:00.002+05:00

Even though English is the official language of my country, it is not the primary (nor secondary, not even tertiary) spoken/written language of choice. Most of us in Karachi speak in Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, and at times in Minglish. Minglish is not any one particular language, and it can only adequately be described as a mixture of English and any other language that you happen to be speaking at the time.

For some odd reason, people in Karachi seem to think that the better they are able to speak/write in English, the cooler they will become. At this rate, an average Karachiite can be described as being lukewarm at best. Don't get me wrong, there are many of us who are best served chilled and even frozen solid. But it's from the mildly refrigerated that you will hear such remarks beginning with 'anyways,' and 'sorry for the inconvenient.' Loadshedding is pronounced load 'shading,' you pay premium 'own' top of the basic price, and everyone calls the Native Jetty 'naitee jaitee.'

So, you can probably imagine my surprise, when I heard a phrase that I had instantly put in that part of my brain marked 'vocabulary of the hot and humid,' as being absolutely correct in all forms of English; 'believe you me.'

Why Blog and First Post

2008-01-14T10:52:00.001+05:00

This has been purely instinctive, what instincts were involved that I can't verily say. Verily, you might wonder? Who uses verily in a sentence? And who questions his own sentence in a sentence immediately following the previous sentence? For now, its just me, Omer, trying very hard to find some thing to write on this first post.

What is this blog all about, you might think when you come here? Well, to tell you the truth (as opposed to making things up on the spur of the moment, which is what I usually do when I write), I really don't have much to tell you. This is just a place where I want to document and share my thoughts and experiences about and in the city I live in. Its called Karachi and it is the biggest city (both in terms of geometry and statistics) in Pakistan. What is so different about my blog? How does it compare to all the other blogs about Karachi that are out there, or not out there, or in here, somewhere? I have no idea and I don't know no god damned code. I just want to keep things simple and maybe probably humorous, by observing and strictly reporting the lighter sides of this city of lights, some of which are off right now due to loadshedding (which is a fancy word they give to our regular power outages).

So here is my first thought: It was quite bright and sunny yesterday. That was where most of the light came to Karachi's side, from the bright and sunny sun.

More later...