I recently joined a social group called ‘Facebook’ and it has been fun for the last week. I was browsing through the group contents and went to see which Pakistani Groups were online and then I found it - a group called Ridiculously Good Looking Pakistani’s.
The hugely self-appreciative title tickled my funny bone no end. However the funniness came to an abrupt end when I went to the Group Page. I honestly was expecting a self-depreciating kind of humour because, well really, just look at the title - 'Ridiculously Good-looking Pakistani's'. In my world people with any sense of reality or for that matter, dignity do not confess to thinking that they are ridiculously good looking!. Well good looking is fine but ridiculously good-looking..... Just the word makes it funny...Right???!!!
Nope... Wrong!
The opening paragraph said that ‘Lahore was the centre of beauty’ and then gave access to a vast collection of pictures of foreign based Pakistani girls and boys – all in teens or twenties. There’s one of a shirtless guy flexing his muscles and another of a young girl in a boob tube. Some are indeed very good-looking, while in the studio shots one suspects that it is the camera man’s skill rather than nature which is to praise here. The only eligibility seemed to be good looks, with no necessity of any other aspect. Even the Miss World/Universe contests require the candidates to show some talent and answer questions in full sentences!
So what is my opinion of it – it’s pretty I suppose. Also kind of brainless. Instead of coming back with impression that Pakistani’s are good-looking, I felt that the group was saying, yeah we’re good-looking but in a dumb way.
Thinking about it i feel that’s not half bad. Give me a good looking guy who was dumb any day of the week. It’s the smart ones who seem to have more issues in life. Blissfully it seems none of the guys and girls on the ‘Ridiculously Good Looking Pakistani’s” Network seem to have any issues outside themselves!
Have a look at http://www.rglp.mysite.com/index_1.html
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
No Gene Kelly in Karachi!
Finally realized the implications of Global Warming which Nat Geo was going on for the past decade. Destructive Rain and wind hit Karachi and all but annihilated the meagre infrastructure. It was 44 degree on saturday (23rd June, 07) and after the rain it cooled off only by a few degrees. Then on Sunday, again the city was pelted by with merciless rain. The death toll was 250 due to falling roof's, bill boards and electricution. Electicution deaths in Karachi seems ruthlessly ironic to me - people dying because of excess electricity and while they live, there is no electricity..... Let me explain......
When we talk of electricity in Karachi, the word that comes to mind is Load-shedding - a term which all my foreign friends are blissfully unaware of - means shedding the excess electricity load by simply switching off the electricity! Ingenius! Well we've been having 'loads' of that. This may seem harmless enough but in a city where the average temperature is about 2.3 degrees higher than last summer (just made that up!) this year the consequences, apart from a loss of productivity is the form of Power Riots.
Power Riots - a fancy name for a riot which is cauzed by lack of power (Trust the presswala's to create a sensational brand name!). I got caught in such a riot a couple of weeks ago. Around 10 p.m. on the evening of 13th June, I was driving through Garden East going to a friend's house. The streets after Anklesaria Hospital started to become congested with traffic and by the time I reached the Garden signal, traffic was not moving at all and had spilt over into the electricity devoid narrow lanes. Apparently the residents around Garden East had been rioting to protest the constant load-shedding. There were burning tires and broken glass from car windows on the streets. The buses, rickshaws, cars and motorcycles were trying each and every way to get out of the paralyzed traffic jam and were turning into small passages and pathways. Like them I also turned into one of the alleys, which had houses on both sides. The alley was pitch dark, with the only light coming from the headlights of my car. There was no electricity and residents - men, women, elders, toddlers - everyone was sitting out on the road. Their sweat-drenched faces were exhausted with the day’s toil, ruthlessly aggravated with the continuous load-shedding. It was a harrowing sight
Finally about an hour and half later, the traffic broke and I reached my destination, not before I had twisted and turned around in myriad dark alleys, all with no electricity and all with tired people sitting outside on the roads..
Driving back home later that night, I passed a well-lit Shahra-e-Faisal with all street lights on the four lane main artery well lit, along with all the advertising bill boards with strong flood lights, The final straw seemed to be Bagh-Ibn-e-Qasim - the recently inaugurated huge park near the sea-side in the middle of Clifton. I was aghast to note that each and every single light of that gigantic park was fully lit. And as if to rub salt in the wounds, there was not a single soul in the park. Upon reaching home, I found that there was no electricity there either.
It is still understandable that the KESC can not immediately produce enough electricity to cope with the growing demands of this sprawling metropolis. But it is simply not acceptable to have such a blatant and obvious lack of management of such a precious resource. Seems to me that indeed there is a dearth of electricity, but the far bigger problem is management. Public places such as parks should be shut or operate on minimal lights after 8 p.m. The lights on the advertising bill boards should be off at 8 p.m. and for conservation’s sake each third light on major roads should be on instead of all. Taking these measures should give the population some relief at night.
This is no rocket science. Just plain common sense - and it seems it is too much to ask of KESC or the Government of who-ever-the-hell-runs things around Karachi. The rioting is still continuing and now with the rains, seems that it will get worse.
Gene Kelly danced to 'Singin' in the Rain' a half century ago. Cant see any one doing that in Karachi any time soon.
When we talk of electricity in Karachi, the word that comes to mind is Load-shedding - a term which all my foreign friends are blissfully unaware of - means shedding the excess electricity load by simply switching off the electricity! Ingenius! Well we've been having 'loads' of that. This may seem harmless enough but in a city where the average temperature is about 2.3 degrees higher than last summer (just made that up!) this year the consequences, apart from a loss of productivity is the form of Power Riots.
Power Riots - a fancy name for a riot which is cauzed by lack of power (Trust the presswala's to create a sensational brand name!). I got caught in such a riot a couple of weeks ago. Around 10 p.m. on the evening of 13th June, I was driving through Garden East going to a friend's house. The streets after Anklesaria Hospital started to become congested with traffic and by the time I reached the Garden signal, traffic was not moving at all and had spilt over into the electricity devoid narrow lanes. Apparently the residents around Garden East had been rioting to protest the constant load-shedding. There were burning tires and broken glass from car windows on the streets. The buses, rickshaws, cars and motorcycles were trying each and every way to get out of the paralyzed traffic jam and were turning into small passages and pathways. Like them I also turned into one of the alleys, which had houses on both sides. The alley was pitch dark, with the only light coming from the headlights of my car. There was no electricity and residents - men, women, elders, toddlers - everyone was sitting out on the road. Their sweat-drenched faces were exhausted with the day’s toil, ruthlessly aggravated with the continuous load-shedding. It was a harrowing sight
Finally about an hour and half later, the traffic broke and I reached my destination, not before I had twisted and turned around in myriad dark alleys, all with no electricity and all with tired people sitting outside on the roads..
Driving back home later that night, I passed a well-lit Shahra-e-Faisal with all street lights on the four lane main artery well lit, along with all the advertising bill boards with strong flood lights, The final straw seemed to be Bagh-Ibn-e-Qasim - the recently inaugurated huge park near the sea-side in the middle of Clifton. I was aghast to note that each and every single light of that gigantic park was fully lit. And as if to rub salt in the wounds, there was not a single soul in the park. Upon reaching home, I found that there was no electricity there either.
It is still understandable that the KESC can not immediately produce enough electricity to cope with the growing demands of this sprawling metropolis. But it is simply not acceptable to have such a blatant and obvious lack of management of such a precious resource. Seems to me that indeed there is a dearth of electricity, but the far bigger problem is management. Public places such as parks should be shut or operate on minimal lights after 8 p.m. The lights on the advertising bill boards should be off at 8 p.m. and for conservation’s sake each third light on major roads should be on instead of all. Taking these measures should give the population some relief at night.
This is no rocket science. Just plain common sense - and it seems it is too much to ask of KESC or the Government of who-ever-the-hell-runs things around Karachi. The rioting is still continuing and now with the rains, seems that it will get worse.
Gene Kelly danced to 'Singin' in the Rain' a half century ago. Cant see any one doing that in Karachi any time soon.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The Girl, ET and Cabbages
When I left college over a decade ago it was my dream to become a journalist. To write pieces of great intellectual merit, to call to the attention of the masses the truth and expose the hoaxes and frauds of the world, to be a voice for the underdog and other such lofty aims. To achieve my ambition I joined an English daily eveninger. They gave me a rickety chair and a desk which had a pigeon’s nest in it. I sat in a dingy little room with a ceiling fan which did about one revolution every other minute with sounds of much protest.
The editor sat in her air conditioned room with the door closed, didn’t know my name and called me ‘the girl”. And the first assignment she gave “the girl’ was that I was asked to put together the horoscope column for the paper. I had visions of research into the zodiac signs and reading up on Linda Goodman and what not. The matter turned out to be much simpler. I had to do this task together with Chacha, who was this lively old peon who had been there since the dawn of time. Chacha told me not to worry that he had it under control. He showed me an old tin jar which contained horoscopes predictions pre-written and pre-cut into exact squares to fit in the space under each zodiac heading in the space allotted. All I had to do is take out any old square and paste under any old zodiac sign and presto – horoscopes for the day.
Needless to say that ‘the girl’ lasted all of five days in that office. I applied to a small foreign bank and they took me on. And from ‘the girl’ I immediately got promoted to “ET” – Executive Trainee. Small step for (wo)man but a great leap for the ego!
There were a bunch of us ET’s. The job title acronym brought a smile to everyone and was the cause of many jokes. We were supposed to be weird and clueless, much like the character ET itself. But there were a bunch of us young lively ET’s and my god did we think we were important. And we did important tasks like…er… like filing. And this was no ordinary filing. It was an ET’s filing - filing in alphabetical order, colour coded and all. And we learnt how to do spread sheets the painful way the bank wanted them and we did industry analysis and we did all kinds of other work which now that I look back was very dull and boring and frankly very insignificant. But the atmosphere around us was so encouraging that it did not feel insignificant. My research on the auto industry, compiled by combing through mind numbing data from the chamber of commerce, stock exchange and auto companies was important, or atleast that was how it was conveyed to me. It carried my name and my designation. I don’t really know if Higher Management ever read every detail I agonized over in my reports, probably not, but it was important to me because after all I was an ET – not just “the girl” any more.
That was a while ago and now I am the head of my own department. My sojourn included being Officer In Charge, Assistant Manager, Deputy Manager, Manager, Assistant Vice President, Resident Vice President and now finally Head of Department. With each designation the job expanded and the title itself gave importance to the job. So when Sumera from Dawn called and asked if I would like to write a piece on job descriptions and how they effect they job itself, I hesitated all of three seconds, the time which it took to gulp the cup of tea which the peon brought for The Head Of Marketing and Media Relations.
As it happens the title of a job and the value an organization attaches to it has a tremendous effect on the performance of the job holder. In the corporate world, organizations compete with each other on the basis of salary and then on the basis of job titling. It is an organization’s way of showing the job holder the value they attach to the job. There is no arguing about the fact that the amount an organization pays to a job holder is the direct equivalent of that job holders worth to the organization. It is also equally true that the title of the job determines the importance the organization places on that particular job.
Job titling is a matter of importance also because it determines the scope of the job and how much can be covered under that particular job title. It describes the job and marks out a playing field for the job holder. For example if one is Assistant Manager Liabilities, it means one is restricted to the deposit mobilization side. However if one is Assistant Manager Consumer Banking, it means one can be looking after the assets as well as liabilities side of banking, product development as well as operations. The title change in itself expands or restricts the job.
Job titling is also a very sensitive matter. It involves personalities and ego’s. Countless job holders get de-motivated if they feel that title change does not commensurate with the actual job itself. In a recent job title change at an organization, the Assistant Manager’s title was changed to Senior Officer. Caused an uproar in the ranks of the Assistant Managers. No matter how much the HR department tried to explain that the Senior Officer was every bit as important as the Assistant Manager, grumbling continued. The HR department, which by the way had recently changed its name from Personnel to HR, thought that since this was a change on a country wide level, that the dissatisfaction would die down soon. Six resignations later, HR still hasn’t figured this one out.
Although the mercenary person a friend of mine is, she said they could call her a Toilet Cleaner as long as they paid her a hefty amount. I asked her what if they called her Manager Janitorial Services. She said that sounded good. And then I asked what about CE , Cleanliness Engineer. And she smiled and said she could live with that too but along with the hefty salary. The point of that comes from this rather silly bantering was that whatever we call a job, if it has connotations of importance and respect, it will be viewed and therefore undertaken as such. Simple.
Master Shakespeare said something like, would a rose smell any sweeter if it were called something else. Surprising sentiment from a history’s most articulate word juggler. Very romantic though. Indeed a rose would not smell any sweeter. It would continue to smell as good as it does. But somehow words have a connotation deeper rooted in us than we think. Don’t know about you but I cannot imagine getting excited about two dozen red “cabbages”. They just have to be called Roses to do their job well!
The editor sat in her air conditioned room with the door closed, didn’t know my name and called me ‘the girl”. And the first assignment she gave “the girl’ was that I was asked to put together the horoscope column for the paper. I had visions of research into the zodiac signs and reading up on Linda Goodman and what not. The matter turned out to be much simpler. I had to do this task together with Chacha, who was this lively old peon who had been there since the dawn of time. Chacha told me not to worry that he had it under control. He showed me an old tin jar which contained horoscopes predictions pre-written and pre-cut into exact squares to fit in the space under each zodiac heading in the space allotted. All I had to do is take out any old square and paste under any old zodiac sign and presto – horoscopes for the day.
Needless to say that ‘the girl’ lasted all of five days in that office. I applied to a small foreign bank and they took me on. And from ‘the girl’ I immediately got promoted to “ET” – Executive Trainee. Small step for (wo)man but a great leap for the ego!
There were a bunch of us ET’s. The job title acronym brought a smile to everyone and was the cause of many jokes. We were supposed to be weird and clueless, much like the character ET itself. But there were a bunch of us young lively ET’s and my god did we think we were important. And we did important tasks like…er… like filing. And this was no ordinary filing. It was an ET’s filing - filing in alphabetical order, colour coded and all. And we learnt how to do spread sheets the painful way the bank wanted them and we did industry analysis and we did all kinds of other work which now that I look back was very dull and boring and frankly very insignificant. But the atmosphere around us was so encouraging that it did not feel insignificant. My research on the auto industry, compiled by combing through mind numbing data from the chamber of commerce, stock exchange and auto companies was important, or atleast that was how it was conveyed to me. It carried my name and my designation. I don’t really know if Higher Management ever read every detail I agonized over in my reports, probably not, but it was important to me because after all I was an ET – not just “the girl” any more.
That was a while ago and now I am the head of my own department. My sojourn included being Officer In Charge, Assistant Manager, Deputy Manager, Manager, Assistant Vice President, Resident Vice President and now finally Head of Department. With each designation the job expanded and the title itself gave importance to the job. So when Sumera from Dawn called and asked if I would like to write a piece on job descriptions and how they effect they job itself, I hesitated all of three seconds, the time which it took to gulp the cup of tea which the peon brought for The Head Of Marketing and Media Relations.
As it happens the title of a job and the value an organization attaches to it has a tremendous effect on the performance of the job holder. In the corporate world, organizations compete with each other on the basis of salary and then on the basis of job titling. It is an organization’s way of showing the job holder the value they attach to the job. There is no arguing about the fact that the amount an organization pays to a job holder is the direct equivalent of that job holders worth to the organization. It is also equally true that the title of the job determines the importance the organization places on that particular job.
Job titling is a matter of importance also because it determines the scope of the job and how much can be covered under that particular job title. It describes the job and marks out a playing field for the job holder. For example if one is Assistant Manager Liabilities, it means one is restricted to the deposit mobilization side. However if one is Assistant Manager Consumer Banking, it means one can be looking after the assets as well as liabilities side of banking, product development as well as operations. The title change in itself expands or restricts the job.
Job titling is also a very sensitive matter. It involves personalities and ego’s. Countless job holders get de-motivated if they feel that title change does not commensurate with the actual job itself. In a recent job title change at an organization, the Assistant Manager’s title was changed to Senior Officer. Caused an uproar in the ranks of the Assistant Managers. No matter how much the HR department tried to explain that the Senior Officer was every bit as important as the Assistant Manager, grumbling continued. The HR department, which by the way had recently changed its name from Personnel to HR, thought that since this was a change on a country wide level, that the dissatisfaction would die down soon. Six resignations later, HR still hasn’t figured this one out.
Although the mercenary person a friend of mine is, she said they could call her a Toilet Cleaner as long as they paid her a hefty amount. I asked her what if they called her Manager Janitorial Services. She said that sounded good. And then I asked what about CE , Cleanliness Engineer. And she smiled and said she could live with that too but along with the hefty salary. The point of that comes from this rather silly bantering was that whatever we call a job, if it has connotations of importance and respect, it will be viewed and therefore undertaken as such. Simple.
Master Shakespeare said something like, would a rose smell any sweeter if it were called something else. Surprising sentiment from a history’s most articulate word juggler. Very romantic though. Indeed a rose would not smell any sweeter. It would continue to smell as good as it does. But somehow words have a connotation deeper rooted in us than we think. Don’t know about you but I cannot imagine getting excited about two dozen red “cabbages”. They just have to be called Roses to do their job well!
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