Category: Pakistan

Pakistan

Musharraf Can Joke (New Business Opportunities)

ReallyVirtual

shirtWho says our President Musharraf can't joke? Here's the latest news from GEO:

PARIS: President Pervez Musharraf Tuesday invited French businessmen to invest in Pakistan without any fears, saying circumstances are conducive for investment in the country. Addressing business executives at a hotel after reaching here in the second leg of his visit, President Musharraf assured safety to the foreign investment and pointed out that the terrorists have never hit business entrepreneurs in the country …

So, can you spot the cruel joke in there? Though the word 'Frenchman' itself is an oxymoronic joke to some, the one I am referring to is how our President (who seems to lack sincere advisers these days) actually used the F word ('fear', you effin eff!) in a room full of French business people! Of all the places in the world, he had to do it in France!

Didn't anyone tell him about what French people are famous for?! On second though, maybe he was just trying to help the French by giving them a chance to work in the most dangerous country in the world, or maybe his speech was written by an american master with a sense of humor. I wish I were there to see it happen (please point me to a recording if one exists please).

(When a country's president has to point out that 'look! our terrorists don't kill entrepreneurs!", that is another huge sick joke, but we aren't supposed to notice that.)

In the last couple of weeks, two potential client firms from Europe that we were negotiating with, politely 'postponed' their decision to start their outsourcing centers in Lahore after hearing about the blast at the GPO. So let us make some lemonade… forget 'Destination Pakistan', there must be a huge untapped market in T-shirts and other memorabilia around the '… most dangerous…' phenomenon – and pretty soon, it may be the only viable business option left for us, so let us start practicing. Let us ask our terrorist brothers to keep blowing people up, while you and I can start selling stuff. Here's one I just made [cafepress.com], wear it with pride!

A Long List of Leftover Links…

Sohaib Athar

 … from last year that couldn't grow into posts. Now I can clean up my 'TO BLOG' bookmarks folder and continue pretending to be a blogger:

Election Commission of Pakistan – Live Voter Search

Sohaib Athar

The Election Commision of Pakistan has released their cutting-edge website that allows anyone who can read and type Urdu to search for any 'Live' (and I presume, dead as well) voters in Pakistan. It is no mean feat to develop an Urdu website in Canada (handling a character-set twice the size of the English alphabet is surely twice as hard), especially a completely secure one that lets you search 80 Million (*gasp*) records!

Even though I still don't understand the need for the website (though it can be fun to search for the people you know to get their exact age and/or who they are married to), and even though its on-screen keyboard thinks 'undefined' is an Urdu character, and even though it does not know me, though I have tried both versions of 'hay' in my name along with my old and new NID numbers (which probably means I can't vote – (Yay!)), but I feel I should still congratulate the CEO of Mehndi.com for an excellent 'gift' back to the nation (in all its waving flag animated gif glory that messes up in Firefox), and for showing us backwards Pakistanis that "nothing is impossible if you go for it." (which translates loosely into "you can create projects out of thin air if you know the right people").

Now, can somebody lend me around 50 shell accounts or zombie machines so that I can scrape that database in a couple of days please? I promise to return them.

Benazir’s Punjabi Volunteer

Sohaib Athar1 Comment

Everything worth saying about Benazir's assassination has already been said many times over, and by bloggers much more capable than myself, so I had no plans to write about the incident – until i came across the phrase "punjabi volunteer" for the 4th time in an hour. Seeing a phrase once or twice in an hour is understandable, 4 times is probably no coincidence. Google for 'punjabi volunteer' (with quotes) and 'benazir dead punjabi volunteer' (without quotes) to see what I mean. 1840 results on Google so far.

In these difficult times, its frustrating to see not only Indian or American websites (that would make sense) but a lot of Pakistani sites and blogs (and prominent ones at that) just copy/pasting the phrase without thinking twice. My questions to all those people regarding the use of this phrase are:

  • Are 'terrorist' and 'punjabi' synonymous?
  • Did the 'punjabi volunteer' give up his life for Punjab? If not, then what exactly was he fighting for?
  • Of course he was a volunteer, aren't most of the suicide bombers volunteers, fighting for a reason, however pure or twisted that reason is?
  • Would anyone have used 'pathan volunteer' (which was more likely) or 'sindhi volunteer' if that had been the case?
  • Another phrase being used is 'Lashkar-e-Jhangvi's punjabi volunteer'. Last time I checked, Jhang was in Punjab. Isn't it a bit redundant?
  • Are Pakistanis really that gullible to forget the 100+ years of British 'divide and conquer' rule?
  • I hear the killer was Al-Qaeda, so does this make him a "Punjabi Al-Qaeda Lashkar-e-Jhangvi" bombing?
  • Why not use the phrase 'Pakistani volunteer', as opposed to an 'Afghan volunteer' or an 'Al-Qaida volunteer' to stress the fact that we are still capable of killing our own leaders/rulers, no matter how corrupt they are, while ignoring the elephant in the room?

My paternal family migrated from India, and are settled mostly in Karachi (with some Lahori exceptions). My maternal relatives are mostly from NWFP, with many (again) who migrated from India and ended up in Karachi and Lahore. I was born in Lahore and have lived here ever since, though I can't (or don't) speak Punjabi, and preferred to call myself a Pakistani. Musharraf is a Formanite, so am I, does that make all Formanites including me pro-Musharraf? Benazir's killer was a Punjabi, so am I (partly at least), what does that make me? I think its time to have an identity crisis for me.

Please Pakistani bloggers, words are dangerous, use them with care… and please stop copy/pasting blindly. Thanks.

PS. The above rant is written minus the generous sprinkling of F-words as originally intended.

We are toads

ReallyVirtual1 Comment

ImagePaulo Coelho's book 'The Alchemist' has been the top favorite of the Pakistan Network on Facebook for a few months now. It is not surprising, as the story has a lot of things in common with the mystic/symbolic fairy tales that my generation (or at least a subset of my generation) was brought up on. This post, though is about Paulo's blog, which is usually filled with though-provoking positive content (and these days, we can surely use all the positivity we can get). A couple of days ago, I read an interesting observation on Paulo's blog about toads, that reminded me of this nation called Pakistan (and it had nothing to do with toads being green). He says:

Read more “We are toads”