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Interesting News: Chineese women going thru a change

Seems like chineese women are getting naturally what their american counter parts have to dish out large amounts of cash for.. a larger bust size!! And that too, across the nation!!! Wow! what else will they do????? Read the complete story here

Tempest in a D-cup as bust sizes grow

 BEIJING (Reuters) – Bra producers have been forced to offer
bigger cup-sizes in China because improved nutrition is busting
all previous chest measurement records.

“It’s so different from the past when most young women
would wear A- or B-cup bras,” Triumph brand saleswoman Zhang
Jing told the Shanghai Daily from the Landmark Plaza of China’s
commercial hub.

“You…never expect those thin women to have such nice
figures if they are not plastic.”

Technorati Tags: chineese, bra size

Criminal Activities at a local Blood Testing Laboratory!!!

This news is horrible! just plain HORRIBLE!!! Dr. Essa’s laboratory in north nazimabad is involved in criminal activities, which reduces the validity of the test reports done by them to absolutely zero!! Anyone thinking of getting a bloodtest done, please aviod going to that one!

The story was published on Karachi Metroblogs by MB and is reproduced here.

I just got this one email
recently. Please comment if you have any such idea or if you know about
this issue, specially those who know any character in the story
personally. It says it has come to public knowledge that Dr.Essa
Laboratories, North Nazimabad, Karachi is indulged in criminal
activities of Sample Pooling thus playing with the lives of hundreds of
people who come to the laboratory for a blood test. Here is the email.

My
brother Mr.Syed Irfan Ahmed who has recently joined a multinational
company was asked to do a blood test. The company before employing any
individual conducts a body screening test so they referred Dr. Essa
Lab, North Nazimabad Karachi as one of their panel laboratory &
close to the residence as well. These blood test reports were dated
31.03.2006 & 04.04.2006 respectively created against the blood
sample of my brother Mr.Syed Irfan Ahmed who has recently joined a
multinational company.

I collected the report from Dr. Essa Lab, North Nazimabad, on
31.03.2006; I was shocked to see the Dr.Essa findings and diagnosis of
24yrs old individual as Hepatitis C Virus with remarks of HCV
antibodies reactive. After getting the report I contacted to Dr.Farhan
Essa and asked him to review the report as its a life & career
matter but they said it is checked & verified by Dr.Essa personally
& he further emphasized that this report is final and cannot be
checked again instead & they are confident about their result
(false claim)

DR. ESSA Lab conduct Test on ELISA Standards AKUH conduct test on
MEIA Standards I went to Aga Khan University Hospital in order to
re-examine the blood sample and Alhamdullillah AKUH report was good
& reflected Hepatitis C Virus NON-Reactive to further confirm the
AKUH test another advance test of PCR (Paramarase Chain Reaction) was
also conducted on an emergency basis which is most costly blood test in
order to further confirm the Negativity of HEPATITIS C VIRUS and the
report also appeared NEGATIVE (Alhamdullillah) I had to spend the whole
night in the Aga University Hospital just to figure out how far their
report is true.. what are their parameters, what are their reference,
who is going to endorse the report, who is the pathologist/consultant,
I also met 2 more poor patients at AKUH laboratory that diagnosed by
Dr.Essa as HEPATITIS C VIRUS… after such findings and denial of
HEPTATIS C VIRUS by Aga University Hospital I started consulting with
Different Individuals as referred under:

1. Gastroenterologist & Hepatologist, AKUH

2. Gastroenterologist & Hepatologist, OMI & Ziauddin

3. Pathologist, LNH

4. Pathologist, POF Hospital Wah Cantt

5. Microbiologist, Abbott Laboratories

6. Pharmacist, ICI Pakistan Limited

7. General Physicians, Samdani Hospital

8. Clinical Specialist, AKUH

After thoroughly reviewing & gathering all possible information
& opinion it has come to my knowledge that they are engaged in the
Criminal Activities of Sample Pooling (in this system they mix 4 blood
sample of 4 different individuals and conduct a test just to save a
cost of the kit in conducting 4 individual test). The reliability is
ZERO in SAMPLE POOLING and if any one among them is infected with a
virus certainly all three will be reported with the same virus &
what they hag done to my brother as well. Met with Dr. Farhan Essa at
Dr.Essa LABORATORIES, North Nazimabad, and Karachi and give them a very
tough time with FIA inspector.

Dr. Farhan Essa personally called & accepted their mistake &
would like to only compensate the expenses that have incurred in the
repeat test at AKUH. He further offered that if any blood test related
to my brother will be free… This acceptance shows that they are
engaged in malpractices & playing with the life of the people.

This misreporting has taken me & my family in agony & pain
that cannot be stated in words. The fear of loosing our brother in next
5 years was such a pain. Hepatitis C Virus is controlled not cured
& take a shape of LIVER CANCER in 5-10years. (God forbid)

I would like to request all persons who are reading this please do
communicate to the people around you. This little information can save
many people from AGONY & PAIN

Your wellwisher

A sufferer,

S. Farhan Ahmed

0300-8260301

syed_farhan_ahmed@yahoo.com

The (Good) Power of the Media

It always feels good to hear stories of heroics and rescue’s. It makes my faith in humanity and the goodness of man stronger. I came across this piece, which although may be considered as excessive self promotion by some, does portray the powerful effects the media can have on society and in lending a helping hand. A kidnapped nine month boy was reunited with his parents due to coverage on Geo TV. Read the story for more..

Nine-month missing boy reunited with parents due to Geo news

KARACHI: A nine-month minor boy, Muhammad Waris, who was missing since
48 days from Orangi Town, was reunited with his parents Tuesday as a
result of coverage on Geo News.

An
employee of the Karachi’s Civil Hospital, Dawood Ibrahim handed over
the boy to the parents at Risala Police Station after verifying the
report of Orangi Town Police Station regarding the boy.

Muhammad
Sadiq, the father of Muhammad Waris, said that his son was kidnapped by
two unidentified women while he was playing outside his house number
H-1480 in Sector-12, Orangi Town.

Sabghia Bibi, mother of the boy, couldn’t utter a word except tears in her eyes as she received her missing boy.

Earlier,
Dawood Ibrahim informed the GEO News that he had found an unidentified
nine-month boy from the hospital where somebody had left him and the
boy was living with his family since last four days.

Technorati Tags: karachi, kidnapping, rescue, geo tv

PTCL to Mobile Calling Charges reduced by 24%

I was browsing through the PTCL website today, and came across this item! Although it’s been in effect from August 2005, this is the first time i’m hearing of it, so i thought i’d post it up here.

PTCL to Mobile calling charges previously were Rs. 3.22 per minute, which meant that every hour you talked on a mobile phone would cost about Rs. 193.2
Then in august, they took the call cost down to Rs. 2.44 per minute, hence, now it costs 146.4 per hour only.

Thats almost a 24% reduction in costs!!! I, for one, am a happy customer now.

For those who like details.. here the low down

In pursuance of PTA’s determination vide letter No. 15-30/05(CA)/PTA dated July 07, 2005 , the PTCL management has approved the following tariff for the fixed line calls to be made to cellular mobile numbers w.e.f. August 01, 2005 .

1.    LOCAL CALLS TO MOBILE NUMBERS                                    Rupees per minute.

             a)         Mobile Termination Rate (MTR)                              1.60

             b)         Fixed line operators’ Share                                    0.52

             c)         GST @ 15%                                                       0.32    

       d)         Total Consumers Price.                                         2.44

Technorati Tags: ptcl, phone bill, calling charges

Karachi, KESC and the summer!

This post is over from Karachi Metroblogs, along with the comment i made to it.

Getting rid of KESC woes…
posted by Khurram Farooq at 9:13 PM on April 23, 2006

As Karachi Metblog readers may know, the summer is here and we are all facing relentless loadshedding from the KESC. In our flat, we typically have an outage of 1 hour in the morning and an outage of 1 hour ni the evening. Besides this, there are sometimes outages of 15 minutes to 2 hours whenever they feel like it. An outage at 3am in the morning of course means another sleepy day at the office. Even then, I am luckier than the people who are facing 5-6 hours of loadshedding every day.

So in the end I took matters in my own hand and went out to buy a UPS + inverter. Some of you may not know what this device does so I’ll give a brief explanation. What you have is a single box which acts as a UPS (an Uninterruptible Power Supply, which switches your power from the mains to the battery when the mains goes out) and an inverter (which converts DC from a battery source into AC which can be used to power the home). This device cost me 6,000rs for a 1.5KVA unit. I also bought a 140A, 12V battery which cost me 4,000rs. For a grand total of 10,000rs, I no longer have to worry about the shenanigans of KESC. During loadshedding, selected lights and fans in the house switch over to power from the UPS and I can continue doing my work happily.

In my opinion, this is a must buy for all Karachiites. There are cheaper versions available. You can buy a UPS which has less power, or is of some other cheaper company for around 3,000rs also. Mileage may vary, but it’s better than sitting in the dark.

Moral: It is better to buy a UPS, than to curse the darkness

Comments

Good suggestion! We recently went for a UPS for our office, since the daily outtages meant anywhere from 2 to 6 hours of lost work. But instead of an inverter, we went for a generator solution.

Before all of you start going on the UPS solution, i’d like to point out one fact. When placing a UPS, especially the car (liquid) battery, make sure its in an airy place. Not somewhere closed like a room. I repeat, make sure the battery is located in an airy place. The electrolysis process (mayb i’ve got the name wrong) inside the battery also produces fumes which are harmful for humans in the long run, and can cause cancer.

In our office, we went for a more expensive (but health conscious) solution of getting a dry-state UPS, since ours is placed inside.

Just puttin in my 2 rs. worth. Hopefully it’ll help out someone.

P.S. If keeping it inside is inevitable, put balloons on the tops of the screws on the battery, since that is the only place the fumes escape from. Then every month (or whenever the balloon fills up) take it off, and release it outside, and replace it. May sound like extra work, but believe me, its better than even the *possibility* of cancer.

Posted by: mansoor at April 24, 2006 04:37 PM

The battle of the boots….

It seems like everyone is having a corporate battle these days to make their brands come out on top. But whats even more interesting to hear is, two World reknowned companies in footwear, Adidas and Puma actually have been having this battle for more than 6 decades. Now thats a pretty long time to fight! and what more.. they have common roots. Both companies were founded by warring brothers Adolf and Rudi Dassler respectively from Herzogenaurach, Germany!!!

An excerpt from the article on the history of the two companies follows..

Born into a family of cobblers, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler were not
always at odds. In the 1920s, Adi and Rudi, as they were more commonly
known, worked happily side by side at the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik
(Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory).

Adolf developed some studs, business boomed under the Nazis and by
the 1936 Olympics Jesse Owens was running in Dassler spikes. But by the
fall of the Third Reich the fraternal relationship was in tatters. “We
will probably never know the real reason why Adi and Rudi fell out,”
sighs Ernst Dittrich, the head of Herzogenaurach’s town archive. “It
was like a marriage that goes terribly, terribly sour.”

Elderly residents in this 13th century town still gossip that the
brothers split because Adi slept with Rudi’s wife, that the two wives
hated each other, that Rudi fathered Adi’s son and that Rudi – the less
successful entrepreneur of the pair – had his hands in the petty-cash
box.

The most likely snapping point came from a thoughtless comment made
one night in 1943 as the two brothers and their wives slept in the
family air raid shelter. “There come those pig dogs again!” raved Adi
as his brother clambered down the steps. From that moment, no one could
convince Rudi that Adi had been talking about the RAF bombers, not
about him.

Rudi’s bitterness increased as he was shipped off to an American
prisoner of war camp and Adi carried on running the family business
without him. In 1948 Rudi returned and set up his own factory on the
other side of the river, now Puma, taking loyal staff with him.

There were varying successes on both sides as Herzogenaurach’s two
shoemaking companies grew. Although Puma still claims it invented the
removable football boot stud, Adi Dassler and his Adidas company is
credited with winning the 1954 World Cup for Germany by providing the
team with them.

But Rudi scored points against his brother when Pele won the 1962 World Cup for Brazil – in Puma boots.

The pair threw ludicrous amounts of money at absurd court battles.
In 1958, Rudi Dassler and Puma took out an injunction to prevent Adi
marketing Adidas stock as “the best sports shoes in the world”. The
court ruled in Rudi’s favour but gave Adi a week to remove all
advertising. In the seven days he had left, Adi convinced an
Adidas-loyal fishmonger to paste the slogan on his fish van and park it
outside Rudi’s office window.

The tit-for-tat ethic continued through the generations. In the
early 1980s, a young Boris Becker knocked on the door of Adidas with a
Romanian manager, hoping for a sponsorship deal. When Adidas boss,
Horst Dassler, refused, his manager, Ion Tiriac, drove straight over
the river to Puma and demanded a meeting. “Go on,” he taunted Rudi’s
son, Armin Dassler, who was the Puma chief. “Take on Boris. That’ll
really make your cousin mad.” It was all Armin needed to hear to sign
the then unknown Becker under a £100,000 advertising contract.

Read on this article for more….

Technorati Tags: adidas, puma, corporate battles, funny, interesting

No more anger management classes….

One of the better sides of having a tighter control system over fedral systems is the feedback you get. This article is just an example of that. People here in Pakistan could really learn from this (and countless other) example, that in order to fully implement something good in their system, they really do need a system for followup. Maybe that’ll lead to a lessor number of failed public systems rather than money down the drain…. I wonder.. just how much do we follow the ‘goras’ anyway…

Coming back to topic.. this post concerns anger management classes given to inmates in UK. It has been learned this sort of treatment can actually make them more violent by teaching them how to ‘hide’ their homicidal tendencies..

Home Office instructions say that such courses for violent offenders
who commit their crimes purposefully rather than impulsively are now
“considered wholly inappropriate”. They add that it is now thought the
courses “have the potential to equip the offender with additional
control mechanisms and increase his/her capacity to manipulate a
situation to their advantage and power”.

Read the rest of the story here..

Technorati Tags: anger management

Cool Links: why americans should never be allowed to travel

Sometimes.. its the just the sheer narrow mindness of people which gets you off! This peice doesnt really have to be only for americans.. as im sure its a trait in human’s in general! But still! Worth a good laugh! Check it out !

why americans should never be allowed to travel

From the The Dilbert Blog: Koran Translations

Once again, Scott Adams has gone down the religious path, and what he had to say this time was really interesting. He’s noticed that the translations of the Quran have different text written in them, and while the translation’s may contain text which tells Muslim’s to kill Christians n Jews… the actual doesnt. What the Quran does say is Go to jihad against those who try to kill you.

Im attaching both the blog post as well as my comment on his blog.

The Dilbert Blog: Koran Translations: “Koran Translations”

Soon after 9/11 I decided to read the Koran to see what would inspire believers to pilot a jet into a building. I picked up an English translation and dove in.

My impression of this translated version was that it was stuffed with warlike language about killing the Christians and Jews and infidels whenever they are on your land or otherwise threatening you. Im no religious scholar (perhaps youve noticed) but my reading of the Koran seemed to clearly support Osamas interpretation. The equation was simple: Christians and Jews were on Muslim land, and the Koran seemed to clearly and repeatedly say that killing them was not only allowed but strongly encouraged.

Indeed, it seemed to me as I read this translated version that killing non-Muslims was the major theme of the book. I wasnt reassured by the instructions that its okay to let non-Muslims live as long as they dont spend any time on your land and dont interfere with your affairs. That leaves a lot of wiggle room.

To be fair, I also remember lots of peaceful and positive stuff in the Koran, about helping widows and that sort of thing. But the emphasis seemed to be about defending the religion with force. And to be fair again, it clearly and consistently said not to engage in an offensive war. Any non-Muslims who don’t bother you are allowed to die of natural causes and burn for eternity in the afterlife. Thats more than fair.

Since then I have had numerous discussions, usually via e-mail, with Muslims who are obviously familiar with the non-translated Koran. They assure me that the stuff I read in the translation doesnt exist in the original.

Huh?

One learned Muslim informed me that translated versions of the Koran are notorious for rewriting the Koran to make it”

I had this to say on his post.

Scott, I’ve also been a non-participating reader of your blog for quite some time.. and frequently republish your entries on my own blog. But this topic was just too good not to comment on. A little background, i am a born muslim and live in an islamic state and deal with my fair share of ‘mullahs’ (wayword clerics).

I’ll be going a little off topic here.. and not discussing whats
all bad in the Quran (since many people have already commented on that). Suffice to say, Islam is NOT violent and killing infidels is not in our way of life. What i did notice however was.. just how many people have actually read the Quran after 9/11.

It is said that for Quran, God himself took the responsiblity to preserve it in its original form, hence the reason we still have the original arabic version of the book, and that He would make sure it is spread. It just dawned upon me how true those lines are.

As for translations, the one at Muslim Society of America is pretty good, since it gives translations from three sources for each line of the Quran. I must note here, that in the few surah’s i read there.. i was really amazed at the difference there was in each
transalation on a couple of lines.

Lastly, i totally agree with a comment made previously here that Islam asks an individual to understand themselves what
is right and follow it. Instead of blindly following whatever they’ve been told.