Skip to content


Rage Against the Machine

The sad truth is, I’m a bit of a whore for Apple products.  This wasn’t always the case, but once Sabeen and Zak got done with me and I bought my MacBook a year and a half ago, I’ve not been able to stop.  The online Apple Store is one of my favourite ways to kill some time at work, even though I can’t really afford any of the seriously fun products I see there.

But hey, it gives me another reason for sticking through the rat race, that hope that one day I’ll be earning enough to buy as many B&W Zeppelin Speaker systems as I want.

Continued…

Posted in Entertainment, Loopiness, Technophilic Lust.

Tagged with , , , , , , .


More Shock, Less Awe

A fortnight or so ago, as part of a stress management initiative at work (I am currently working on a two-year project, and it has not been easy or fun, which fortunately Global HR recognises), I was invited to attend a workshop to help me cope with my stress.  I assume that what I filled out on my supposedly anonymous survey form might have had something to do with it (stick-figures murdering each other that I doodled all over the sheet).

Continued…

Posted in Loopiness, Starts and Jerks.

Tagged with , , , , , .


Ashes to Ashes

Although there are many things Karachi lacks, quality food isn’t one of them.  Pointing out that the best restaurants in the country are in Karachi is a technique guaranteed to set any Lahori aflame with rage (and a self-destructive spiral of denial).

The thing is, Lahoris know how to eat.  We know how to dine.  They have food.  We have cuisine.

(Now that I’ve alienated four of the seven people who actually read this site, we can get to the real thing).

Continued…

Posted in Entertainment.

Tagged with , , , , , .


Heated Up

There is perhaps no more miserable time of the year to be in Pakistan–from a seasonal perspective at any rate–than the summer. Unfortunately, that one season tends to last about…oh, five months, so really for about half the year, you find yourself in a literal hot mess.

To wit: for reasons that are by and large terribly uninteresting, I found myself getting home before dinner-time this past Friday.  This was–in many ways–completely thrilling, and I was completely chuffed at the idea of finally sitting down and making my way through the stack of DVDs that have not only been gathering dust but also in all likelihood evolving into their own sentient species next to my desk.  Full Metal Alchemist, Milk, The Duchess, Weeds Season 1, Are You Being Served, Babel, Crash (shut up, don’t judge me, I never get the time to watch movies for pleasure, so I’m generally several years behind the times)…I ordered some kabab rolls (oh blessed grease!) from the infamous Hot ‘n’ Spicy [sic], popped in the first DVD and sat back.

Which was when the power went out.  Not with a bang, but with a whimper. (I was the one whimpering.)

Continued…

Posted in Infrastructure.

Tagged with , , , .


Melting Down

Caveat: I’m tweaked on caffiene and not attempting to make cogent arguments here.  So back off.

Between Karachi’s rapidly escalating summer hear and our government demonstrating that it is amply incapable of running a country in any manner that doesn’t lead directly to huge amounts of cronyism and embelzzlement of public funds, most of Karachi is ready to lose its collective mind.  So while it was a mild relief to work from home in the afternoon today because most of the office was unable to actually, you know…get to work, it was equally frustrating to hear the tired polemics of the idiot politicians on TV all day long.

(My mother is addicted to bad political talk-shows.  And there’s no shortage of those, or of Imran Khan’s willingness to appear on them.)

Continued…

Posted in Apoliticism.

Tagged with , , , , , .


Martial strife?

Wow. The current government seems to be getting its collective ass kicked if the news reports are accurate. And yet, someone tells me that El Presidente is totally chilled out.

Obviously, the Camouflaged Wonder has completely lost his mind. It’s either that, or the man is so solidly backed up by the military and assorted toadies that the very idea that he could be resisted is no longer a realistic event for him.

Even though I’m pretty jaded when it comes to the cesspool that is the Pakistani political scene, I wanted to slap the shit out of every elected official who came on TV celebrating the fact that Pakistan had–for the first time in basically forever–allowed one “democratically” appointed “Parliament” to “complete” its “tenure”. Not-so-hidden-between-the-lines is the “Oh thank goodness, we basically got the chance to sit on our asses for another five years and not really accomplish a damn’ thing. Where’s my martini?” gasp of relief.

Shutting down TV stations is perhaps not the best way to start this. Stifling the media, imposing states of emergency, possibly colluding with multiple people to assassinate political leaders…really, none of this is particularly encouraging. Least encouraging of all though is the wonderful line overheard at the election booths today, from a gentleman being harassed by some poor woman whose voter registration couldn’t be confirmed, despite all the documentation being present: “Oh, just give her anyone’s ballot, just get her out of here.”

Yeah. We’ve got this whole “free and fair elections” thing down pat, we really do.

See, I didn’t vote today. I’m not terribly ashamed of that fact, although I realise that in theory perhaps I should be. Part of that is my somewhat irrational rage at the fact that the government just HAD to set the elections to be held on the same day as my birthday, but part of that is also the fact that I just really don’t care enough. I’m probably missing the enormous subtleties of the socio-political landscape here by miles, but as far as I’m concerned, I don’t think that Pakistan needs or deserves democracy, at least not the way it currently stands. Get rid of the feudal landlords and their voter blocs, spread some quality education, start gradually reducing the amount of money spent on the defence budget, begin integrating the military back into civil society, and then…maybe…we can think about the whole “one man, one vote” thing.

Dave over at Artsaypunk and I were at a mutual friend’s for dinner last night, along with some other people, and the conversation inevitably turned to politics. He pointed out, accurately that if he as a Canadian could get into the polling stations and lodge a vote, we’d know for sure if the elections were rigged or not. While I haven’t spoken to him since and am unsure about whether he actually tried it out, the real meat of this came when those of us present and capable of voting were talking about what we were going to do. And I’ve got to say, there was a lot of apathy, and the real issue that kept being raised by every successive entrant to the dinner was “Well, when ALL the candidates are complete bastards, what’re you going to do?”

We tried the “lesser of two evils” routine. That didn’t really work, since no one actually KNOWS anything about the candidates, despite their having completely taken over the city with hideously ugly banners and posters on any and every available surface. We tried the “which political party will take care of us?” approach, and while there was some half-hearted murmuring about the MQM, no one could really identify a single thing that any of the parties have ever done to really try and turn Karachi into a fully functional city. We tried Tarot cards, tossing coins, dice, tossing and I’m fairly sure that when a large group of people all vanished into the garden at the same time, entrails were involved, but I don’t think anyone really came away thinking that their votes would make a difference. I know I didn’t.

I know some people trashed their ballots, or scratched out candidate names, or voted for everyone available. But watching the Election Commissioner hem and haw about how lower-than-expected voter turnout doesn’t make the elections any less legitimate, I wondered if a minimal voter turnout would have actually made a difference. In law, silence does not equal consent, but in this case I can’t help but feel that a refusal by the entire populace (I know, I know, it’s never going to happen) to turn out for the farce that is “democracy” in Pakistan might make more of an impact than if they all wound up voting.

I want a ballot choice that reads “I hate all of these corrupt politicos equally”, I really do. That’s the only thing that’ll get me out on the streets; not the incredibly loud and annoying PPP “rallies” that deliberately blocked off traffic for hours on end with morons singing badly composed paeans of praise; not a slew of pictures of an MQM candidate with a “come hither” arched eyebrow; not double and triple-chinned independent candidates or mustached hopefuls with nervous grins. If I thought, with even a slight grain of belief, that my vote would make a difference, I’d head out and vote.

But I don’t believe it would, or that it will. Not the way things are. KO has a good piece with more factual statements about the elections than just my gut feeling–you can find it here.

Posted in Apoliticism.

Tagged with , , , , , .


Fleeing

Well apparently anywhere I go, political drama is sure to follow. I’m currently sitting in Lahore, on a work-trip, sated with sushi and in impending pain from having gone at the treadmill a little too enthusiastically right after getting off the plane, and so far there have been about a dozen phone calls from people asking me if everything is OK.

Apparently Benazir Bhutto’s in town or something silly like that.

And just as apparently, under the new(est) state of emergency in Pakistan, I can’t actually write anything about politics or involving a name that rhymes with “Push-her-off” without risking jail-time. And while I do enjoy telling my frantic friends in the US and the EC that we Pakistanis are, in fact, throwing “state-of-emergency” and “martial-law”-themed parties, I’d probably not enjoy sending anyone an SMS saying that I’m being carted off to jail. I’m just odd like that. I assume that someone out there probably gives a shit about all of this, but it’s funny how apparent the dichotomy inherent in most Pakistanis is so gloriously expressed at times like this. To wit, I think most people are genuinely horrified at what’s happening, and feel that it is intrinsically, innately, horribly WRONG.

But as my friend Kyla put it over dinner, “It’s not that they’re even depoliticised, that would imply there was some sort of political sensibility that has been removed. It’s like there’s negative awareness–they’re completely clueless.” And in turn, most of them…well, of us, don’t even know where we’d begin to express our rage. Because we have lives to lead, paycheques to earn, food to put on tables, families to take care of, and we can’t really afford to be put into jail by some asshole cop with more vigour than common sense, and have to wait around for bail, etc.

And really, it hasn’t impacted our lives in a tangible way. When it does, that’s when shit will start flying, I suspect. Right now, everyone’s relatively interested in keeping things copacetic; it’s practically a genetic trait, that desire to just hope everything will blow over, and to hush up whatever one can in order to speed up that process. There are some people I know who have kicked things into gear insofar as they can (leading to some amusing confusion when taking part in hastily-assembled/dispersed “flash protests” was described to me as “flashing”), but most are content to bitch and moan to each other without actually DOING anything about the situation that they so deplore.

It’s like living in the 1980s all over again! Only with fewer shoulder-pads, and slightly less dramatic hair.

Posted in Apoliticism.


Blase

I’ll get around to putting something up here in a few days.

Posted in Starts and Jerks.




der.php which does and tells WordPress to load the theme. * * @package WordPress */ /** * Tells WordPress to load the WordPress theme and output it. * * @var bool */ define('WP_USE_THEMES', true); /** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */ require('./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php'); ?>