Benazir Bhutto's Death

The major fiber optic lines are cut, gas stations are being burnt (that is why they're all closed), ATM machines are being broken down and we're told to remain inside our homes because the situation outside may be dangerous. I don't know for sure, but my friend who just came over tells me he hardly saw more than three cars on his way here. Usually it would take him more than 40 minutes to get here because of the insane amount of cars on the road. But he says nothing is really happening out there. It's just that something might happen.

I'll admit, I was one of those who said, "And she survived!?" after Benazir's motorcade was attacked upon her arrival in October. But now when I look at the complete anarchy in our country I realize that this tragedy will just further ruin the great nation's image. The whole world only gets to see these things in an exaggerated form and they don't know the peace and tranquility it offers - that I have experienced all my life.

Benazir's death is as sudden as it is sad. She was one of those well-educated politicians our country has hardly seen. The Bhutto family could be considered to be the reason why democracy was seen as possible in Pakistan in the first place because of their style of politics. Both her brothers were killed, her father was killed and now herself. Two shots in the head and one in the neck - while wearing a bullet proof jacket, sitting in a bullet proof car.

I am now anxiously waiting for the next Newsweek issue and I bet it would have something to say about Pakistan on the cover page.

I think to myself, isn't Pakistan like one of those contacts on Facebook that always show up on your homepage or at the top of your "Recently Updated" pages?

So what, that makes Pakistan an attention seeker?

What it means to be in Lahore

Stuck in one of those moving parking lots they call roads nowadays, I noticed the car right in front of me moving backwards in neutral gear. It was about to hit my car! I meant to blare my car horn and put the car in reverse gear but instead I just honked and moved the car forwards right into it. My car's bumper fell off! (There goes my record of driving since 13 years and never having met with a single accident!) To be fair, it was only a minor accident and the other person's Suzuki Baleno's bumper paint came off slightly. He stopped his car and I could've made a dash, but I just wanted to be responsible, you know? So I stopped and apologized, and the two men just shrugged it off. At that point I thought to myself, "I love this city!"

See, Lahore's not just about driving for me. It's about the world of interaction with its people that comes with it. The honk patterns, the meanings of a single beam or a double, the coordination with the plethora of pedestrians jaywalking, the movement of the bicycles in the center of the road, and more recently, the weird looking rickshaws. Lately, you can find dozens of these new-age rickshaws that run on compressed natural gas (CNG), painted in unaesthetic colours, shaped like shoe boxes and that can now hold more than two passengers. For those of you who have been on the Canal Road, you know it's also about guessing whether the next underpass would fall on your left or your right, and for anyone who has never been to Lahore during election time, it's about those hundreds and thousands of cars with all kinds of weird Pakistan flags on them - insignias of various political parties' the owner of the car supports or promotes. You can also see the banners and posters of them all across town.

Pakistani politics... *chuckles*

Everyone I know who is reasonably intellectually sound has their own version to the overplus of stories behind the current and recent 'situations'.

"The emergency was a hoax to just get rid of the chief justice that opposed him."

"Musharraf did the right thing by imposing State of Emergency - this nation needs discipline!"

"They're all liars and thieves, all of them, so my idea is, why bother?"

"Emergency!? What emergency? You see anything that has changed in my life? Has anything changed in your life?"

I don't have my own version I guess. I really don't know who to believe or who to side with. So I'll just leave it to that. I didn't register for the elections anyway so I can't vote and that little piece of red tape means my voice can't be heard.

The love is amazing here. You see it first at the airport, where a bunch of your friends could come to meet you and to hand you a pack of cigarettes so you have something to smoke when you get home without making your parents stop on the way. Not to mention the ten or so relatives who could come to pick you up even if your arrival was supposed to be a surprise.

If you arrive home in Lahore after a long time, all you need to do is to eat some street food and get sick. You will get the massages, the special treatment (that means a load of things) and all the (junk) food you desire. Anything you may want, just u.t.t.e.r.i.t.

It's not all that much fun being sick though, I mean, if you are really sick - you know, with high fever and all (which I was). Then you have got to make trips to the doctors and the pathology laboratories and eat throat-gagging tablets and capsules. But love is worth it, right?

I feel one thing I will distinctly remember about this trip to Lahore would be those medical trips I made - and I made a lot of them in the one week or so I've been here. The specialist doctor's opinion that could cost me nearly five hundred Singaporean dollars costs me five hundred rupees here, which is less than fifteen Singapore dollars. Since I've been here, I've seen dentists (plural, yes), a skin specialist, other specialist physicians and a phlebotomist.

Just to be clear though, I'm not that sick. Well yeah I was for one day and it was totally worth it. But otherwise I am perfectly alright. I am just being greedy by seeing all these specialist doctors who wouldn't even turn to look at you and give you an informal diagnosis for a nominal fee back in university land (that's Singapurah, lah!).

And you know what's the funniest thing about restaurants here? Just like we have smoking corners or smoking tables in Singapore (sometimes) we have non-smoking tables and corners in Lahore!


Only some of these fork lifters have dropped cars in the past:

Passengers Create Electricity at MRT Stations

The East Japan Railway Company (JR-East), aiming to develop more environmentally friendly train stations, has been doing research on some sort of human-powered electricity generation system.

If the research provides reasonable results, the "ticket gate electricity generation system" could provide a fraction of the electricity consumed by huge and busy train stations.

The system relies on a series of 'piezo' elements embedded in the floor under the ticket gates, which generate electricity from the pressure and vibration they receive as people walk over it. If the system is attached to some high-efficiency storage system, these ticket gate generators could serve as a supplementary source of energy in this time of global warming awakening.

Currently the system is being tested at the JR-East head office in Shibuya and they might have installed it at other outlets by now, but it seems like it will take a while before such technologies will make it to Singapore MRT stations.

Women Can Now Wee Anywhere!

Picture: The Whiz Plus

It sounds crazy, I know, but there are loads of women out there who complain they can't sit on toilet seats in publics washrooms, let alone doing it behind a bush.

There are these feministic 'ladies' who think it's unfair that God made man such that he can open his zipper and wee anywhere whereas a woman just can't do that.

The company called WhizBiz is selling three different models of what they call The Whiz. One is for indoors use, one is for outdoors (it's made of some high-tech plasma coating so that all liquid is repelled and it always remains dry), and there is one for collecting midstream samples for tests as well.

Everyday, women are becoming more and more like men and vice versa. Just think of all those guys who don't wee standing up any more because it's not 'decent' - and now these women are going to feel 'enpowered' that they can wee standing up. I mean, if you look at the symbolic significance of these things happening, you will see that the world we live in doesn't make much sense any more. It doesn't to me.

Containing Angelina Jolie's Hotness in a Burqa

In her movie A Mighty Heart, Angelina plays a journalist's wife stuck in Pakistan where the movie shooting took place. Yes, Jon Stewart asks an impertinent question: Can the Burqa conceal her hotness?


[The Daily Show link]