Startup Insiders Lahore Videos

I went to the Vahzay office last week to meet Athar Osama (after 4 years) on his short visit to Lahore, and had my portable hard disk with me, so Imran Zia was nice enough to copy the full Starup Insiders videos for me – and this is how I ended up with the videos for SI3 (4GB – the one I attended) and SI6 (5GB – the one I missed) on my hard disk, waiting to be sliced and uploaded to youtube or GoogleVideo. I'll probably compress/clip/upload them during some free timeslot this weekend (I still need to find a decent software to do that – I'm a youtube uploading n00b – suggestions are welcome), so stay tuned and if you missed the sessions (which were very interesting) and I will upload the videos whenever I can.

I Condemn the Lahore Bomb Blast

While searching for updates regarding the bomb blast in Lahore today, I couldn't help noticing the top two links on Google News were from the Associated Press of Pakistan, a 4 hour difference between the two releases. The titles are linked to the APP pages – I'm just copy pasting the two 'releases' one after the other.

Minister Petroleum condemns Lahore blast ISLAMABAD, Mar 4 (APP): Caretaker Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Ehsanullah Khan Tuesday strongly condemned bomb blast in Lahore, which caused loss of precious lives. In his message he said it was the heinous act of terrorism reflects inhuman nature of the perpetrators. He said anti Islam and anti state elements wanted to derail the ongoing democratic process in the country but they will not succeed in their nefarious designs. The Minister prayed for the deceased, that may Allah Almighty rest the departed souls in eternal peace and grant the bereaved families the courage to bear the loss. He expressed his condolence and sympathy with the families of killed and the injured.

and… 

NA Speaker condemns Lahore blast ISLAMABAD, Mar 4 (APP): Speaker National Assembly, Ch. Amir Hussain on Tuesday strongly condemned bomb blast in Lahore, which caused loss of precious lives. In a statement, the Speaker said it was a barbaric act of terrorism, which reflected inhuman and callous nature of the perpetrators. He said a few misguided people were trying to disrupt peace in the country and derail the peaceful democratic process but they will not succeed in their nefarious design. He said the criminals were playing with the lives of innocent people. Praying for the deceased, the Speaker said that may Allah Almighty rest the souls of the victims in eternal peace and grant the bereaved families the courage to bear the loss. He also sympathized with the injured and their families and prayed for their speedy recovery.

I was really moved by their straight-from-the-heart honest sentiments, it did not know our government cared that deeply about the deceased. I'm also surprised at how similar their thought process is, its almost as if they were speaking from the same slimy tongue. I am sure that with such caring rulers who are thinking about the nation all the time and are dedicated to the democratic process, Pakistan will soon be back on the way towards progress.

So, to follow in their footsteps, I strongly condemn the bomb blast in Lahore, which caused loss of precious lives…

APP, can I have a press release page please?

Bomb Blast In Lahore

My wife normally picks up my son from school at 1:30AM. She had forgotten her cell at home today, and at 1:40PM I receiving a call on her cell from my son's friend's mother who had  heard a couple of blasts on her way home, and wanted to confirm my wife was okay. She told me the school administration was panicked and the roads were blocked all over. I could do nothing but wait – thankfully, she got home before they blocked the Mall completely.

The blasts, they say, were in the Naval Academy (near Zafar Ali Rd. and the canal). It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same… the last time I glanced at the TV, the death toll was 5 people. I don't know whether the motive was political or religious, or both (as our religion is inseparable from the state), but what I do know is that we love to cheer on the people killing their brethren in the name of religion – as long as it is happening in another country. Hmm, maybe I should move out of Pakistan and cheer the people fighting (killing) in the name of religion from a safe distance.

LESCO Please Give Me My Life Back

Dear LESCO,

You knew about the (then) impending power crisis of 2007 way back in 2004 and I was glad you didn’t do a thing about it, besides blaming rains, coal shortages and the crumbling infrastructure in the four years that followed. Not many people see the wisdom in that , but I am not one of those people. I realize very clearly that the 5 hours without power daily were just the training we Pakistani needed to evolve to a higher level – a person who can survive without electricity and gas for that much time can do pretty much anything, and feel superior when his (weak) American friends ask “How can you live like that?!” in awe and inspiration. Those load-shedding spells were just the thing I needed to learn get my work done in the 4 hours of continuous internet that you gave me, thereby increasing my productivity, and giving me the time to read a few hundred pages of a book daily by laptop-light, thereby increasing my quality of life. The one hour discharge and recharges increased my laptop’s battery life by 50%, and forced my RSI-prone wrists to get the much-needed rest that I would have ignored otherwise. We didn’t really need running steel mills either, all they give us is global warming and pollution, so I was happy when they were shut down. Your tag-teaming with the Gas company also allowed me to eat out every other day due to lack of any other options. Life was wonderful, I was constantly looking at the bright side of life in the daily darkness spells, and had become a fan of your greater wisdom.

Why, then, did you have to promise an end to load shedding by February 2008, and actually deliver on that promise?! I have been waiting for a power outage for two days straight now, please give me back my 5 hours of load-shedding per day. I miss them. 🙁

Startup Insiders Lahore – Braindump

As it is almost bedtime (8AM), so I must dump a few very interesting points that were raised at the meet up before going to sleep. These ideas are sticking around in my brain after 3 days have passed, and deserve more discussion, perhaps in another similar session.

  • Its easier to do a startup near graduation – This was a suggestion given by the host, Zia Imran to the young kids there, and were almost the same words that I had used (while pointing towards Sharjeel) only a few minutes earlier. What I actually said to a 30something friend was something along the lines of "These kids are not married, they live with their parents and have the energy to do it". We live in a culture where we don't have to move out of our parents' house after graduation, so I see no reason why an aspiring entrepreneur should not spend a few months during/after graduation to give it a try. They don't even have to drop out of college (like Bill Gates, or more recently, Mark Zuckerberg), and can entice their parents with founders' equity in exchange for free meals. With no children demanding attention four hours a day (or as in my case, hogging the bandwidth) and no grocery shopping to distract their long coding sessions, they can focus on their startup idea like no 30+ person can.
  • Living in Pakistan helps us build our mental muscles – With the competitive education environment that we have (getting an A+ was not the goal in my days, it was getting that '1st position) and the third-world conditions that force us to schedule our lives around load-shedding, we get the exercise in patience and adaptability from an early age that an average American probably lacks. So while Fahd Bangash (with an American childhood + Stanford education, I think) clearly showed his frustration at the lack of infrastructure in Pakistan and his fascination with the quality of life in the Silicon Valley, we also had old salts like Kewan Khawaja and Hasan Rizvi looking at the positive side-effects of life in Pakistan. I think one of the major reasons the Indians and Chinese are so successful "out there" is that after their relatively tougher childhood/adolescent years, they find it really easy to succeed in the West when they suddenly get the infrastructure and the opportunities that they lacked in their homelands. It is also the one of the reasons that some of us stay in Pakistan – with all the handicaps, "making it" here deserves more merit than making it in the US, for example.
  • The quality of life / buying power is better in Pakistan in some ways – Another important fact mentioned in the meetup was that of people converting dollars into rupee while deciding to move out of Pakistan. I believe that there is a definite need for another session that focuses on this topic so that people can make informed decisions about the opportunity costs of going abroad to work seeking greener pastures, people who can see that 4000$ = 240,000Rs. but do not realize that a cab ride can cost 1,200Rs. and a studio apartment rent can be 100,000Rs., or more importantly, that you can't get back at a one day notice to attend that loved one's funeral. 

So I think these topics deserve more discussions, offline or online. I did see a lot of camera flashes but I am still waiting for the video/pics links to start appearing on youtube/flickr. Ideas dumped. Off to sleep now.