Sajjad's Blog

Heard about this second bombing in under a month through BBC's "Breaking News" alert on Monday. When I realised that the mosque in question was the one right near my in-laws' house, I immediately called them. Luckily, everyone in the family is ok though a lot of people that my wife or her family knew were killed.

The bomb was powerful enough to do a lot of damage to the mosque as well as kill about 20 people and injure many more. It's a weird feeling to know that something like this has happened so close to home and at a place I've prayed in.

Apparently the authorities were also pretty hard on the mourners the next day instead of doing something about all this violence. Now, the police chief of Karachi is being transferred, but I wonder how that will improve the situation. Two mosque bombings in a month and killing of a preacher on Sunday. When will all this stop?

Posted at 23:44pm PKT Comments | ¶

The National Database and Registration Authority, setup to modernize the issuance and tracking of national ID cards, must be the biggest failed project in the history of Pakistan. Its aim was to replace the flimsy and poorly maintained older cards with newer, digitized ones by December 2003. Yet more than half of the country's 150 million population is still stuck with the old, obsoleted ones.

Due to various reasons, I didn't apply for mine until about 2 months ago, but still haven't managed to get it. This after paying extra for urgent processing. It clearly states on their website that regular applicants will receive theirs by regular mail while urgent applications will allow the cards to be delivered by courier service and within two weeks.

After over a month without any news, I called their hotline number and was told that my card had been delivered to the center where I applied. I wasn't impressed, but decided to go and collect it myself.

Upon reaching the center, I was told that they were breaking for Friday prayers and that I should come back in the afternoon to collect my card. This despite the fact that a large sign clearly said that the prayer break starts at 1:15pm, when it was only 12:30pm. Trying to point this out didn't help either so I came back after 3:00pm.

The final straw was when they told me they had already shipped the card to yet another location, one with a funny, hard to remember name. Off course, they couldn't just ship it to my home or office address or let me know the final location when I first applied. I have now decided to stop the wild goose chase and try to find someone who I can complain to. Anyone want to help?

Posted at 20:00pm PKT Comments(18) | ¶

I was around the Jinnah Super Market area this afternoon when I heard a bunch of shopkeepers pointing towards the mobile phone shops on the center's northern edge and discussing what had happened. What I gathered from the discussions was that there had been an armed robbery there just a while ago.

Apparently, the robbers took a bunch of cell phones and did a lot of damage to the shop, but failed to take all the booty because their car didn't start. Then they tried to make their getaway in a taxi cab, but were caught somewhere near G-10, quite a distance from the scene of the crime. They must have really bad luck.

Also, this must be the first time I've heard of the Capital's police doing something useful instead of harassing law-abiding citizens. I'll know more details tomorrow, but if they really did have a hand in apprehending them they have my appreciation.

Posted at 21:31pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Last Tuesday was reserved for meeting my relatives in Korangi. It is a huge area near the sea that is notorious for violence between rival political factions. It is supposed to be a crime-ridden slum, though I found it to be pretty much like any other place in Karachi (i.e. seemingly calm and dirty). There was also some visible development of the place in action.

On the way there, I noticed a group of "luxury" flats next to a dried up and polluted riverbed. It was amusing to see a huge signboard proudly marked "Grey Riverside Apartments". They could have at least given it a less depressing name.

We spent the rest of the day at my uncles' houses, enjoying meals and chatting. In the evening, one of them took me out to the fishing area on his motor cycle. Before the coast, there is a large shanty town with small, meandering streets and the foul stench of rotten fish in the air. By the time we reached the enormous chicken feed factory on the other side, next to the sea, I had become accustomed to it and it didn't bother me any longer. I even got to board one of the fishing trawlers which were marooned due to a storm alert.

A cousin also pointed out an area where huge concrete pipes lay scattered and where mutilated bodies would get dumped at the height of Karachi's violence. It is now the site of a weekly cloth market made up of tents.

We finally left Korangi around midnight, something considered quite dangerous as everyone kept reminding me.

Posted at 17:00pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

Yesterday, I "officially" resigned as the Tokyo Linux Users Group's Lead Sysadmin. As much as I loved maintaining it's server, iinix has kept me too busy to do much of late. Not being physically present in Japan (much less in the Tokyo/Yokohama area) in case of an emergency was also a negative point.

Thankfully, Tim Meggs has volunteered to take over. I'll be around to help, but he'll be the one to blame if anything goes wrong. Congratulations Tim. :-)

Posted at 16:48pm PKT Comments | ¶

It was this day, exactly a year ago that I arrived in Pakistan from Tokyo. It still feels like just yesterday though when I think about it, so much has changed since then. Life is nowhere near as good as it used to be. I haven't made many new friends and miss my old ones dearly. I'm not as fit as I used to be and don't enjoy the same sports that I did while in Japan.

On the plus side, I have my own improving business (though it's not quite profitable yet) and biggest of all, I'm a married man. Wonder what the next one year has in store for me.

Posted at 23:17pm PKT Comments | ¶

Just before leaving last week, I got a phone call from my worried wife about how bad things were in Karachi and that I should reconsider coming there. I had missed the news about the suicide bombing during Friday prayers on the 7th and apparently, things were starting to get ugly there.

I decided to ignore the warning and stick to my schedule since I assumed the worst was over. The day I arrived, there had been some riots earlier and there was talk of a couple of protestors getting killed, but the ride home from Karachi station was just like that on any other day. Reports of isolated incidents of violence continued to come in during my stay, though I really couldn't see what the fuss was about. The only disturbing part was how the security forces were rounding up and detaining so many innocent young men on the slightest suspicion.

Other than the unfortunate and despicable bombing, the killings seem to be limited to men actively involved in riots and protests or those who ignore common sense and wander into the wrong areas at the wrong time. Though some of the violence may have been sectarian, a lot of it was the result of local elections which were held on Wednesday.

From what I gathered, things used to be much worse some years back and the smallest act of this nature causes great concern to Karachiites. I still remember reading about dozens, sometimes as many as sixty or seventy people being killed daily in drive-by shootings and other attacks so this isn't surprising.

Still, Karachiites seemed much more resilient than before. The markets were bustling with shoppers and life went on as usual most of the time. I even heard people joke about how there are still more new borns each day than those killed.

Bushra and I managed to leave on time on Friday despite a strike call by a political party, but I really would like to see more of Karachi and try to find some business there. I just hope the government does something to improve the situation and root out the perpetrators since any disturbance in Karachi has a lasting effect on the rest of Pakistan.

Posted at 23:01pm PKT Comments | ¶

Got back Saturday evening from Karachi after a whole week of travelling and meeting people. I first took a bus to Lahore via the Lahore-Islamabad Motorway which went pretty well. Now, they even have a DVD player on board and the timing is pretty good too.

On reaching Lahore, I had to travel all the way across the city to the train station. There I learnt that the train (Karakoram Express) was an hour and a half late and may be further delayed along the way. As soon as it left, I realised my mistake in choosing the non-airconditioned economy class. Despite the air being hotter outside, all the other passengers insisted on keeping the windows open. Soon, the whole carriage was filled with smoke and dust, which didn't seem to bother anyone except me.

After a few more delays, I reached Karachi 16 hours after leaving Lahore, my hair turned brown and my dark gray t-shirt a sandy color. At that point, I upgraded my return tickets to the air-conditioned class, something that cost me three times as much.

Posted at 19:07pm PKT Comments | ¶

I'm off to Karachi in the morning. If I can find the time, will try to get moblogging working with my new phone, though I don't think the connection I have even supports email.

Also, I doubt the net connection I'll have in Karachi will allow me to use SSH, so no blogging for a week. Anyone know of a WiFi hotspot that offers relatively unrestricted access? I should have completed web support for PyLogger. Maybe another day.

Posted at 01:57am PKT Comments | ¶

Finally took the plunge with my first real cell phone in over a year (sorry Nabeel, but the Siemens I bought from you isn't *that* good :-) and the Nokia that got snatched was also a low-feature, budget set).

The Samsung SGH-x600 seems to be a Rs.20,000 (~US$350/JPY 38,000) phone at the price of a much lesser one. It has all the features and I haven't heard any complaints from other users. The only reason I can see for the actual price being almost half of that is the negative image people have of Korean brands.

I just bought it yesterday evening and haven't used it much yet, but the interface is much better than that of others I've recently used. I generally don't like phones that are too small since they compromise on key and screen size and just feel flimsy, but now that I have one, it is quite convenient. I still would have preferred a flip model, but those aren't very common here. This is what the X600 looks like:

I've heard excellent things about the VGA (640x480) camera. Doesn't compare to the megapixel ones you guys in Japan are using, but good enough for blogging and other cool stuff. The one thing I was warned about is that accessories for these types of (relatively) uncommon, but good brands can be pricey. And the PC connecting cable alone costs about 20% of the price of the phone. I'll have to think about it, or maybe try to get Infrared working on my laptop.

Posted at 13:06pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

An insider's view of Saudi Arabia (via Wirefarm). Reading this, I have newfound respect for my home country. I just hope Pakistan never deteriorates anywhere near to this level.

The incident involving the burnt schoolgirls reminded me of one on the night after the battle of Karbala (AD 680/AH 61). When the tents of the House of Mohammad were set on fire, the women consulted Imam Zainul-Abidin (A.S.), great grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and the only surviving male adult, about whether they should burn inside or leave the tents. The Imam decreed that saving their life was of utmost priority, therefore they must leave the tents.

How it became religious to let young women burn or be battered and abused by the men I just can't imagine.

Posted at 13:35pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

A good friend, Faraz Nayyar, has started his own blog. Good to see more Pakistanis getting started with blogging though it'll probably be a while before we have a community comparable to others such as Persian or Japanese. Wider use of Urdu script should help as well.

Posted at 17:32pm PKT Comments | ¶

This month started really hot, dry and sunny. It ends with a week of rain and thunder. The last few days have been especially bad. Current weather: Cold with light, but continuous rain.

Posted at 17:22pm PKT Comments | ¶

Found LinuxPackages.net which is a repository of all kinds of packages built for Slackware. Useful for when you don't have time to build something from source.

Next, I still have a couple of servers running Red Hat 7.3, which was retired by Red Hat last year. This meant that they couldn't be updated by regular means. The Fedora Legacy project provides these crucial updates so that the life of these systems can be extended. You'll need to install Yum for easier updating but you could just download the packages and manually update. I just gave it a try and it downloaded quite a few header files but didn't seem to update anything. Will have to check the configuration.

Posted at 23:21pm PKT Comments | ¶

Sorry, we couldn't be together on your first one after our wedding (another one of those weird customs of sending the bride to her parent's home for a while). I'll make it up to you when I'm in Karachi next week. Take care.

Posted at 18:07pm PKT Comments | ¶

Via VinBlog. Some memorable dialogues from Hindi movies as well as translations of some of the funnier ones (familiarity with Hindi or Urdu will help):

The villain has the heroine tied to an electric chair with a long electric wire leading to a switch. The villain throws the switch and the electricity is now shown flowing towards the heroin. The hero is running towards the heroine racing with electricity to save her, and yes he is catching up. The villain at this point shouts to his chamcha: "Charlie voltage baddhao, electicity jaldee jayegi".

The last line translates to, "Charlie increase the voltage, it will make the electricity go faster". 'chamcha' is literally spoon, but in this case refers to minion or gromit. I guess translating English movies would be equally hilarious for Urdu/Hindi speakers.

"There is no chamcha".

Posted at 16:43pm PKT Comments | ¶

How strange. I was just reading about perpetual motion machines a couple of days ago. It seems that a Japanese musician has developed a means to harness the power of permanent magnets, something I have been wondering about for some time. Read about it here (via Wirefarm):

I don't see a date so it could be an April Fool's joke, but it doesn't seem likely. If it wasn't for them stating that he has actually sold some of these and has gotten patents for it, I would have dismissed it as a prank. Afterall, it has lots of similarities with the Keely Motor Company, one of the biggest scientific frauds in recent history.

Posted at 12:58pm PKT Comments | ¶

Buses seamed to have died out in Islamabad a couple of years ago. Sure, there are the vans and mini-buses, but not the large, spacious things you would find in another city. I rarely use the local public transport here, but today decided to give the new service a try. Varan already has buses running on different routes in Rawalpindi and have now started running between the Islamabad Secretariat and Rawalpindi's Sadar area, covering two whole cities.

To attract customers (and probably to kill off the smaller vans that are the main form of public transportation in Islamabad), they are charging a measly 5 rupees to go anywhere along the route and running a bus every five minutes or so. Quite amazing to see both the previous and the next bus from the bus you're sitting in. Now that's about 9 yen or 9 cents to go across that whole distance with optimal frequency. I doubt any small-time transporter will be able to survive this assault.

The service is a vaste improvement compared to earlier ones. The vehicles are new and clean, the ticket conductor wears a uniform and hands out a ticket (with others, you just pay the fare without any concept of tickets) and the drivers don't try to race with each other (common cause of accidents). While nowhere near the level of convenience and comfort of Singapore buses (ooh I miss those), I was quite satisfied.

The only thing to worry about is what happens when they have killed off everyone else. Off course a price hike is imminent, but will they maintain the same level of service or will it degrade just like the previous ones? I hope not and looking at how things are progressing these days, there's lots of hope.

Posted at 00:08am PKT Comments | ¶

Returned from Lahore this morning. Among other things I did there was a visit to Hafeez Center, a group of buildings containing countless small and large shops. The main product? Computer hardware.

They had a bunch of stuff from cell phones to piles of used PCs and workstations. A great place for a geek in Pakistan though nothing compared to Tokyo's Akihabara or Singapore's towers full of gadgets and geek toys. PC displays were abundant and so were used branded desktop systems, but I couldn't find a single shop that had a decent collection of mice.

Maybe things are different further down in places like Karachi, but that's one of the things that really bugs me about virtually any kind of shopping in Pakistan. Everyone carries the same stuff. I miss places like T-Zone and Sofmap in Tokyo where you could find dozens of models of any piece of hardware or the specialized shops that sold just Unix machines. Or the stores that carried a wide variety of a certain type of food, for example. In Pakistan (or at least in Islamabad), you can go to the biggest grocery store and still get pretty much the same type of goods you'll get at a smaller one, just in a better shape or in higher quantity.

The main reason for this is probably the hesitant nature of sellers (as well as buyers). Nobody likes to take risks. Everyone tries to do the same thing the guy next door is doing without realizing that in the end, everyone will suffer from the increased competition. The buyers initially get a better price, but also suffer from lack of choice and an eventual decline in the quality of service.

Maybe some hope is to be found in the better areas of Islamabad and Karachi, but they have a long way to go.

Posted at 23:01pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Had a good jolt at around 2:15am, right here in Islamabad. Quakes are usually quite small, but this one was comparable to some of the scarier ones in Tokyo during the last couple of years.

What makes 'em really frightening here is that most buildings are badly designed (if designed at all) and either use too much or too little of the required materials. Forget about being built to withstand e@rthquakes.Maybe that's why I could hear rumbling from the houses around me. It terrified Bushra since they are virtually unheard of down in Karachi. Good thing she isn't in Japan.

Posted at 18:14pm PKT Comments | ¶

Ten years ago, my favorite musician shot himself at the relatively young age of 27. Admittedly, I wasn't really a fan at that time and was only exposed to Nirvana's music after Kurt's death, but it was still a huge part of my turbulent life back then.

The Beeb has a pretty good article on Cobain's life, together with comments from other fans and individuals:

I didn't know he had talked about suicide earlier, but I guess there couldn't have been a different ending than this for someone so troubled and full of angst.

Ten years. Has it really been that long? It's things like this, coupled with my prodigal long-term Memory that make me realise how old I've suddenly become (almost as old as Kurt was at the time of his death). I don't seem to have many friends and close family members that remember events older than the 90s. Time for some Pennyroyal Tea.

Posted at 19:18pm PKT Comments | ¶

Looks like I missed it (or survived it). Yesterday was the 4th day of the 4th month of 2004. As mentioned here, the number 4 is sometimes called 'shi', the word for death.

Posted at 14:47pm PKT Comments | ¶

After years of using Linux and advocating it, I've finally come to the conclusion that it's just not suitable for serious use. I'll probably keep it around in some shape, but from now on, my operating system of choice will be Windows XP.

Although I used to have a lot of fun playing around with Linux and trying to tweak it, I've realised that it's all a complete waste of time and really does nothing to improve productivity. Windows XP on the other hand, comes tweaked and ready for everything. The interface is nice and intuitive and application support has never been better. It's also gotten very secure.

Penguins may be cute, but nothing beats butterflies when it comes to aesthetics.

Posted at 10:25am PKT Comments | ¶

KO puts forward some views about cricket that I share completely:

"The UK gave up on cricket a long time ago, but sadly this so called sport still persists in the Empire’s former colonies. Its a terribly elitist and clubby sport. For the British army officers posted to the middle of just about every forever back during the days of the Empire, cricket served a vital purpose. They could form their little cliques and clubs and spend whole days weeks just passing the time away. It can be argued that there is nothing like a mind numbingly boring and totally pointless activity to while away the times, and cricket fitted the bill so well that someone would have had to invent it during the days of the Empire if it hadn’t already existed."

Read the whole piece here:

Posted at 13:13pm PKT Comments(3) | ¶

This site is currently the hot topic on quite a few blogs and news sites. Elena, an avid biker, has dared to go into the "Dead Zone" around Chernobyl and document her rides on its deserted roads.

Until now, I hadn't really known much about the Chernobyl disaster and this has really brought forward what effect it had on the people, the surrounding area and the world's view of nuclear technology. A whole town devoid of life, empty roads, death everywhere. Something you wouldn't think existed outside movies and sci-fi novels.

Now considering that I don't live too far from a nuclear reactor myself, I have another reason to move somewhere else. Still, I think the world learnt something from Chernobyl and hopefully, we won't see anything like it ever again.

Posted at 11:11am PKT Comments | ¶

For the last few months, I've noticed a lot of changes taking place in the capital. Initially, I thought these were just due to the summit that took place in January, but these have continued long after that.

A missile that was acting as a monument in the middle of a roundabout near F-10, was taken down after relations with India started to improve. Palm trees sprung up on the road leading to the main government buildings (though this project seems to have failed, given the nature of Islamabad's climatic extremes) and more recently, road-sides are being redone with new trees and shrubs being planted. The road leading up the Margalla hills to "Pir Sohawa" is now brightly lit and presents an awesome sight from the city below.

Apart from these, I've also noticed an increase in entertainment events taking place in this previously quiet and sleepy city. Hordes of people were out for the Basant festival last month around the main park in F-9, the same place where the Islamabad Police hosted an event recently.

An event called "SAF Expo" is underway near the smaller hills of Shakar Parian as well as a fair with rides and other attractions. Even foreign holidays are often celebrated.

During the past week, huge billboards have suddenly gone up around the main roads though they are still empty of any advertisements. I wonder if they are a way to fund all this other development.

All this is great, but I think the authorities should be putting more emphasis on improving the housing situation. With little being done to expand the city, prices of existing land and houses have sky-rocketed. Most people are now forced to live in outlying areas like mine, that don't fall under the control of the Capital Development Authority and lack basic facilities.

If a viable solution to this issue could be found, I just may consider staying here, but until then, I'll keep thinking about Lahore, Karachi and all the other places.

Posted at 14:09pm PKT Comments | ¶

So how do I feel after having to work almost non-stop, without rest or a good meal for over 32 hours? Awesome. I just hope I can leave "early" tonight.

Posted at 20:21pm PKT Comments | ¶