eviction notice

Today, we were ’served’ with an eviction notice to vacate the house we’ve lived in for the last 6 years. Its been “approved for demolition” and no longer considered safe to live in. So now, we’ll be moving to another place, setting that up and start living in it till the next shift. Bye bye wonderful community… i’ll miss you.

Now a little background.. im from a military family. There… thats the background. Haha. So anyway, we live in whatever accomodation allotted to us for the time being, depending upon where my father is posted.

Being from the military…. home doesnt have the same permanence for ‘us’ as it does for a lot of other people out there.. We cant make long term plans on decorating the place… you never know when you’ll shift out.. There’s no alterations you can do.. no enchancements (like adding a new room.. retiling the bathroom, etc), no personalization (coloring your room in a color you like.. and such).

My room consists of one wall-mounted study table, and a mattress on the floor. Thats about the whole ‘furniture’ in there… when i see other friends of mine doing ‘creative’ work with their places, or making modifications.. it always gets to me. Like this one friend did his room in a full blue theme and it looks WOW! my room.. its offwhite

The shifting program always reminds me of the the saying “home is where the heart is”. In my case.. wherever the military thinks its suitable. LoL!

When you forget to have lunch..

its a strange feeling when your so busy during the day, that you forget to have lunch! The rest of the day, your hounded by this feeling that you havent had anything to eat all day, and proceed to eat as much just food you can lay your hands on. (Atleast i do that). This is also applicable when you have a light lunch.. For the last couple of days, my lunch at office consists of one naan and a little dahi. This is part of the wierd lunch routines me and an office colleage of mine are in whenever one of us decides we’re getting too fat for our own good. (Psyched, Suga.. your not alone). Sometimes, we have fruit chat for lunch.. sometimes its one roll from the corner bakery and then sometimes its binging times when we go for biryani or chicken cheese rolls or club sandwiches.

So anyway, yesterday was dahi n naan.. which meant that when i got home, i was plauged with this feeling of being ‘empty’ and proceeded to have two sandwiches, and a full dinner and topped it off with another sandwich.. all in the name of being ‘empty’.

Today, i skipped lunch all together.. being so ingrosssed in work that even forgot to drink water.. now its 6 PM.. and im thinking i’ll have a light snack before i get home… since im feeling empty again.. after which dinner will await.

Now that this post is complete.. i forgot what was the point i was trying to make…. hhmm.. reminds me of this line i saw in a TV serial yesterday “keep track of your rants” when the character started off ranting about one thing… and ranted about a lot of other things in between. LoL! Looking forward to having a sandwich… yummy!!

Ad Teaser #4 : Solved

And here’s another ad campaign throwing out teaser’s. This board is also on Shahrah-e-Faisal after crossing FTC.

It reads “Music Goes…“

Now im guessing it has something to do with Sony Erricson, since Orange is their color of choice nowadays. Lets wait and see.. Any guesses?

Update 29th June 2006: Well, we were right! it was a teaser for Sony Erricson.. “Music Goes Mobile” which is their campaign for the new Walkman mobile phones k770i and k580i. So much for the mystery. Though i think they dragged it out a little long.. since i had all but forgotten about their teaser myself. All in all, not a good teaser campaign.

Subconsious Messaging – i-mate JasJar

How many times have you seen an ad or a billboard which made you think almost subconsiously about how cool would that product be on you. Most of the campaigns i see around here try to force theat message on you, like the Samsung radio ads “Check out the cutie shes going out with…. and the ear thing! just check that out!“, the Axe Effect and so on. However, every once in a while, you come across an ad thats actually done tastefully and sends out the message both clearly and subtly. The JasJar ad i’ve managed to capture does just that. If you just look at how the girl is looking at the guy (all googly eyed with a touch of wow) you’ll understand why so many guys (present company included) now really need to get a JasJar!

Its these sort of things which win customers! Im pretty sure no one likes products shoved down their throats, but if you can manage convince them they need it just by suggestion then the fruits are all the more sweet. Now when the heck will i get my limit upped on the card so i can go and buy it.

today at the office…

It was the best of times…. well maybe not, but it was definately the worst of times today by far! Reached office at 8:40 this morning. A feat by my standards, but only to be welcomed by the news that we dont have any water today. Not only dont we have drinking water as Fontalia’s distribution/bottling network is pretty much screwed over, they say that their bottling plant is bone dry for almost a week and they dont have water to distribute, but also no washing up water. The buildings water pump has broken down. What a wonderful way to start the day. But wait!! there’s more! We’re out of petrol for our generator here, and in-case KESC decides to live up to its reputation, we wont be having any electricty also. Guess what? KESC lived up!

All this started clearing up at around 11 PM when our deligent accounts and adminstration manager managed to score not one.. not two.. but FOUR gallons of drinking water! God bless him! A colleague with a bike also came in, and they went out and got petrol for the generator.. so we only had to endure no electricity for half an hour..

Its now 3 PM, and electricty has been on the fritz since 1 PM now… our generator runs only about 3 hours on Rs.500 worth of petrol (thats the size of the can we have), and im expecting it to stop working any moment now…

The heat is slowly starting to get at me… accompanied with a big dose of sleep and general bitterness! Productivity has gone down the drain (it being the only thing going down the drain today, since theres no water) and the clock seems to be ticking even slower than usual… Please just let this day end!!!!

The state of the purse strings… after college

I read this article here on how, after we graduate college and get a job, our spending mindset doesnt change. We still view lunches of Rs. 50 or more as expensive and compare other items the way we used to while in college. I agree with this alot, as the first thing i changed after getting a job, was started treating myself to a little better life. No longer would i have to make do with having a Rs. 10 roll for lunch, because my spending money was limited.

Many of my friends however, did not change their mindsets even after we’ve been working for almost 1.5 years now… why? I dont know!

“We have to realize that people earn money now,” she said [reffering to being invited to a birthday party where the minimum entree was of $30 to $40]. “We’re not college students any more. It’s ok to spend money on some things.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way before. Things have changed–most of my friends have great jobs and $30 or $40 isn’t a huge hardship. Yet a bunch of us (myself included) are still in the college mindset sometimes. That’s good for a lot of things, but not everything.

I used to be jilted by my friends than im too loose with my purse strings… this article is my vindication!

Back to basics.. Advertising Methods

Billboard advertising started in karachi, with these huge neon signs in the shape of corporate logos back in the 60s or 70s i believe. I’ve been seeing them since i was a child. Then recently, thanks to the ever advancing technology of printing, panaflex signs came cropping up, promising a much more colorful and appealing way to reach out to customers.

Then Karachi was hit by the electricity problems its been facing and it no longer became feasible to have those panaflex hoardings since they requried powerful lights to light them up. (At times upto 10 high power lights are needed). For atleast one company now (Pepsico), its going back to the basics, they’re lighting up their old neon-based signs once again in addition to the newer ones.

Does the world truly does go around in circles??

A day with my ‘ghharelu’ peeps

Why??! Oh WHY did i have to get stuck with the most “gharelu” friend group EVER!! These are the type of people who would just love sitting @ home, talking (gossiping) their hearts out, and for fun… do some cooking and housework!! Oh by the way, im talking about both guys & gals in the same group.

We had a get-together the other day at this friends place in clifton. First off, they got there about 2 hours late.. which i guess was pretty acceptable, given prior history… but what was really mind numbingly boring was the fact that after they got there… two immediately tried going off to sleep.. one had brought a digital camera (complete with tripod and all) and he started taking snaps.. while the rest just sat around… doing NOTHING! that continued for about two hours (aarrgghhh!) after which i had to leave to pick up another of my friends. I tell you, i wasnt ever that happy to be out in the searing heat EVER than at that moment! oh yea, during those two mind numbing hours, we also had to decide what we were going to have for lunch! Now this group, all training to be high-power(?) executives and managers took that long to decide that they’ll have biryani for lunch!! (God help this country!!)

Lunch was a pretty okay affair, with everyone complaining about just how much food was on the table, and how they couldnt eat it all(did i mention these ppl like to complain about anything they can get their hands on?!) and berated the poor guy who ordered and paid for the food to be an extravagant fool! (i felt so sorry for him).

After lunch, we had a bit of a down time.. while the digestive systems took over.. and sleep threatened to overcome each one of us. Originally, our plan included going for a visit to Mohatta Palace for soak up a little history and culture. But the post-dinner euphoria would not let us even get up from whatever positions we were lying in. At this point, the procrastinators in my group voiced their opinions that we should postpone the tour since they dont feel like it (read: since its not a home and we cant be gharelu there :@). Then ensued a long battle between the two groups (those willing to go, and those not willing) on whether to go or not. The former eventually won after having a little support from an unexpected ally.. the KESC. They switched off the electricity right at that moment, making the latter group even more willing than the former to go visit mohatta palace.

The visit was a pretty good time. Seeing artifacts with your own eyes is much better than seeing them on TV. More on that in my upcoming post on KMB. After the visit, we went off to Park Towers for… of all the things… water!! It was very hot and we forgot to take cool water from home. Stayed there for about 1/2 hour before returning back, and going our seperate ways back home.

All things being relative, it was a pretty good outting, especially after hitting Mohatta Palace. We’ve scheduled another visit there soon in winter when temps are a little more bearable, and now decided to hit Quaid-e-Azam museum and National Museum too in the upcoming year! Hows that for a different sort of outting?

Why arrest the victim?

I was reading this news item about an Alim being arrested on charges of raping one of his muridni (ardent follower) in Daily Times… and this one line really got me all riled up!

The police have arrested Qasim and Samina on rape charges.

Samina was the woman who was raped!! why arrest her? what was her fault?! i now seriously believe there is something substantial behind the media hype against pulling down the ‘Hudood Ordinance’! If this is the sort of actions it perpetuates then im all for “down with Hudood!”.

coming of age..

Ever since mobile companies started operating in Pakistan after the initial ban, they’ve had one thing in mind. Make as much money as possible by giving as little choices to the consumers as possible. Way back then.. i made a prediction that one day, mobile companies would put *consumers* first someday!

Seems like the day has come! With such intense competition going around among the six mobile companies we have here, and the impending buyout of Paktel by China Mobile, new innovative mobile packages were bound to make their way which would benefit a particular class of users, such as smsers or callers.

First it was Jazz Octane.. a haven for sms’ers… by making sms’s very cheap. Consequently, they souped up their call rates on the package to make up for the deficit. Next Telenor came up with their Djuice package (i think Jazz just were quicker to market their product, trying to beat a big bad foreigner to the punch? by releasing Octane first) which was very similar to Octance and very good for people sending/recieving smses.

Now, finally to complete this stage of growth, Telenor has started a new Talkshalk package, which is geared towards people who call a lot, especially the smaller calls. SMS rates are higher in this one (at Rs. 1 against the Djuice rate of 0.2) but calls rates have come amazingly down. Finally telenor has implemented 30 second billing, and to one up warid, applied it to *all* networks instead of just its own and PTCL.

Paktel, one the other hand, has also introduced a new package in which you pay Rs. 500 a month, and all calls from Paktel to Paktel (upto 15 minutes) are FREE. Technically, you would need to make atleast 4.5 hours of calls (18 calls of 15 minutes each) to breakeven, and from then onwards its savings galore.

The other two companies, namely Ufone and Warid are till now focusing more on their value added service, rather than adding new packages (though we still have to see).

So overall, i think the market has now come out of its initial kid-phase, and has to really provide some benefits back to the consumers on whose back they make the tall claims of “x million customers”. In times to come, im pretty sure they’ll actually get serious about making the lives of the people better.