Benazir Monument?!

Benazir was a female landmark, first female leader in a Muslim state, Harvard Grad, massive other accomplishments and we are all sad about her death. However, does that grant the government the right to spend tax payer money on a monument that will not churn out free cash for the public, have fountains of fresh drinking water, a hot dog stand or even an LCD TV to at least distract the viewers from the audacity of the govt to approve such ostentatious and unacceptable spending!

Benazir monument plan approved

By Syed Irfan Raza
Tuesday, 31 Aug, 2010

ISLAMABAD, Aug 30: The government has approved the Benazir Monument Complex plan that will be constructed through taxpayers’ money at a vast piece of land near Shakarparian.
The construction of the monument will cost Rs400 million while the land provided by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for the project is said to be worth over Rs500 million, a senior CDA official told Dawn on Monday.

It would be the second monument constructed in the capital city during the last four years. The National Monument in Shakarparian was built on the directives of former President Pervez Musharraf at a cost of over Rs700 million.

The monument complex, which is being financed by the Ministry of Culture, would be completed in two years by the CDA.
The 10-acre-land has been provided for the monument for Rs108 million at the subsidised rate of Rs2,250 per square yard.
Civil engineers say the cost would escalate according to the complex’s proposed design to up to Rs1 billion.
“We have asked the CDA to send us the exact cost of the land so that it would be paid by the Ministry of Culture,” said the secretary culture.
The land located alongside Islamabad Highway between Zero Point and Faizabad was earlier used for holding industrial exhibition, one of the popular annual features in the federal capital that was closed due to security concerns.
“The monument is a small token of love and respect the people of Pakistan have for their great leader Benazir Bhutto,” Prime Minsiter Yousuf Raza Gilani had said at the monument’s ground-breaking ceremony a couple of months back.
A smaller monument would also be built in Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh where Ms Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007.
Prime Minister Gilani had selected two sites for construction of Benazir monuments in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
It may be noted that already the existing National Monument in Islamabad had led to criticism against former President Pervez Musharraf. The critics were of the view that the amount of Rs700 million spent on the monument could have been spent on a number of uplift projects like opening of schools, hospitals and libraries etc. 

Is this the way we want to spend our money when we already don't have enough for ourselves, let alone help the flood affectees - who have lost everything? I'm pretty sure a statue of anyone, let alone BB is going to bring them any comfort. That is, unless it shoots laser beams at the malaria-ridden mosquitos hounding the now homeless.

[Event] Silent Candlelight Vigil for Nonviolence

POST ON BEHALF OF CANDLELIGHT VIGIL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Silent Candlelight Vigil for Nonviolence Time Saturday · 8:00pm - 9:30pm Location PNCA Auditorium Parking Lot Islamabad

Join the FB event today and show your support

We invite you to join us in a moment of strength and solidarity to stand together and collectively condemn all forms of violence, especially in light of recent events in Sialkot. The purpose is not to target  a particular organization or group of people but to acknowledge  the role each of us as ordinary Pakistanis have failed to play in preventing this degeneration of our society.

Let us take this moment to pledge towards change, towards countering apathy and towards playing a stronger, active role in reconstructing our society and our country. 

We strongly oppose vigilante justice and intolerance and violence and we are committed to bringing about the change that is needed!  

Please assemble at the PNCA parking lot (behind Marriott) at 8pm on Saturday and bring at least one candle. We will walk to Constitution Avenue  and we will stand together in silent protest for one hour. The media will be invited to cover the event.

[PKFlood] Some useful information for those looking to help

Please visit www.wi-tribe.pk/relief for links to reliable agencies working in the affected areas.

Google launches two very useful tools for assisting with aid work:

1. Resource Finder - http://pakistan.resource-finder.appspot.com/?&lang=en
2. Person Finder - http://pakistan.resource-finder.appspot.com/?&lang=en

ITEMS REQUIRED FOR FLOOD AFFECTEES

Published by NDMA (www.ndma.gov.pk)

1.            FOOD ITEMS

a.	Dried Milk for Children and Families	b.	Dates
c.	High Nutrition Biscuits	d.	Food Packets consisting of Tea, Sugar, Milk Powder, Vegetable Oil,  Pulses and Spices
e.	Mineral Water		--

2.            NON FOOD ITEMS

a.	Water Coolers	b.	Cooking Utensils
c.	Footwear for Children	d.	Mosquito Nets
e.	Blankets	f.	Bed Spreads
g.	Floor Mattresses	h.	Tents
i.	Tarpaulin

3.            PERSONAL HYGIENE KIT

a.	Soap	b.	Hand Towels
c.	Tooth Paste	d.	Female Sanitary Pads
e.	Diapers/ Pampers for minors	f.	Washing Powder/Soap

4.            MISC ESSENTIALS

a.	ORS	b.	Mosquito Repellents
c.	Prickly Heat Powder	d.	Children Anti Rash Creams
e.	Water Purification Tablets	f.	Candles /Match Boxes
g.	Torches		--

[Emergency Appeal] Donate empty plastic bottles for water

We need empty 1.5 liter water and soft drink bottles for sending purified water to the flood affectees. 


Please help get used ones from  restaurants, food outlets and friends  near you. 


Call Freeha. She will collect. 03335607439.


For information on how to help, visit www.wi-tribe.pk/relief with references to agencies you can contact.

The NexGen of NexGens

HTC, in my opinion, is the latest and greatest phone maker in the world. It makes me happy that they are not your typical manufacturer from Japan, Germany, Korea or even the US. In fact, they hail from a tiny island most know very little about known as Taiwan.

I had the pleasure of visiting Taipei earlier this year (see photo evidence of dinner at Taipei 101 - right - and the event venue with our hosts - Left) during a WiMAX conference. It was a great trip, I even made a few friends from the regional wireless industry.

Today I came to know about a concept phone that HTC is working on and it's known as HTC 1 - a revolution in phones. If this phone is what they show it to be, i think that Apple finally has some real competition for them.

This phone has everything from sexy finishing, UV light for killing germs, improved UI, LED screen, built-in kick-stand, access to google apps, etc. Maybe there was a reason why NexusOne has been stopped by Google...maybe this is why...

Have a gander at this link to find out what I am talking about:

Coolness in a phone should be like this...

Social Rage - Part 2

Since my last post, I've been doing a little reading about the evolution of marketing and how social media plays a vital role in that process.

Strangely enough, I'm not sure how many 'marketeers' know about marketing evolution, which can also be known as New Media - a conspicuous term that encompasses

I have a theory - and I'm not sure if anyone has actually touched on this yet, but with all the social networking fuss, perhaps most have not stepped back to take a bird's eye view perspective and assess the changes we are so engrossed by...

Originally (and i'll explain why I use this term), marketing was known by 4 principles or P's

1. Product
2. Promotion
3. Price
4. Placement

All in that same order. When was the last time you sat down to review whether this was still relevant or 'accurate' for today's marketing environment? Speculation, maybe, but still worth a look.

A quick wikipedia search reveals a new assessment and claim of the 4 P's and their evolution. There is a new guy in town and his name (sorry ladies) is SIVA. Yes, finally an acronym that can narrow down the universe of marketing into modern-day means of creating a 'thing', making it 'available' at a reasonable 'cost' and letting people 'know' that it exists to serve a need that they may (or may not) have identified.

As defined by wikipedia

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA [11] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus. The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, placement, promotion) of marketing management.

Product → Solution

Promotion → Information

Price → Value

Placement → Access

I wonder how many of our industry experts consider this to be worthwhile knowledge...

On this note, I was watching Biz Stone's interview with Stephan Colbert a couple of days ago, where Biz was quoted repeatedly for having said..."The messaging system that we didn’t know we needed until we had it.” To which Colbert responds: “That sounds like the answer to a problem we didn’t have until I invented the answer.”

Taking the arrogance out (which is minimal since Biz is just very cool anyway), that statement is something I had believed for myself when working in Tharparkar, trying to sell drip irrigation to poor farming communities with a company I launched in 2007 called Micro Drip - started with the support of Acumen Fund and TRDP. The farmers didn't know they needed to:

• save water
• earn more money but work a little harder
• use technology that will not only make you the 'cool' neighbor, but also be able to provide a better life/future for yourself and your family

Interestingly enough, the technology itself is a 'twitter' of sorts - a replacement of existing, more prominent ways of doing things (mostly archaic) but the change aspect is like asking them to switch religions.

The bottom line in this lesson...is change something we should embrace or is it something that will embrace us? I was always told that the only thing permanent in life...is change!

Until next time.

Dad's book - flight of the falcon

My dad wrote a book not so long ago entitled the Flight of the Falcon, which has managed to penetrate the borders of Pakistan and gain much popularity in India, USA, UK and even Australia. Thank God for the wonders of online ordering.

This book was a monumental accomplishment because it took him nearly a decade to put the whole story together and have it published (with great strife, I might add). Having just gotten over the hype of the book (and it's highly controversial, yet exciting contents), he has neared an Urdu version, which we expect to hit the bookstores soon.

I am quite excited about the turnout since a large portion of his immediate audience is actually going to be educated by a lot of what he has written, rather than see a different version altogether.

It will be quite interesting to see how it translates into Urdu - I wonder if there are words available in the dictionary to replace what was expressed in English. And if so, how emphatic will they be?

Social Rage - Part 1

Man, been a while but it's like riding a bike. Once you've fallen a few times, scraped a few body parts, you just get back on like it was yesterday.

I've been busy with life. I got married, became slightly more important with a new profile at work, expanded my horizons, even got a new pet in between. The only thing that I realized had not changed was that I am considered an ancient when it comes to blogging.

Let me elaborate...

So when in Karachi a few months back a colleague of mine and I decided to setup a mini ad hoc blogger meetup, I wasn't sure what to expect, how to prepare or even what to take along. I did the next best thing, which was to take everything I could (giveaways, etc), a sample item from one of my CSR initiatives, a few printed copies of our corporate profile and my team. It started off okay, but that could have been because of the free snacks and shakes (or as one of the guests put it - you feed, they come).

Nevertheless, the idea was to extend ourselves to the 'blogging' community - to which I considered myself an Alien/new-comer since I haven't really 'blagged' seriously for a few years. The evening passed on, more food was consumed, more time was spent yapping away about how we would like to do this, that and the other from a corporate perspective but would also like to engage the community at large in ways that appeal to them.

After everyone left (some 3 hrs later), I spoke to a good old friend of mine, who also happened to attend the event. She gave me some feedback that I wish I had gotten prior to the event. However, what I reminded myself was that no way is the wrong way, just make sure you learn from each experience and improve each way as you progress.

Not only had I felt I missed the boat, I also jumped on the micro-blog bandwagon and left old school blog posts to the younger generation. See, I started blogging back in 2001 but I can't for the life of me remember the name of the hosting domain. I shifted over to blogspot a few years later and slowly life got busier and blogging just seemed to fade away.

I opened my first Facebook account back in 2004 - when it was limited to college networks, mine being one of the few on the panel before it became a public gathering for all the worlds personalities to come and 'digitally network'. Twitter was a recent phenomenon for me - July of '09 so the month is still etched in my brain. In between I remember something about having an Orkut account (while in college), but that only lasted a couple of years because of some constant privacy issues. Good effort though and certainly a model considered by Mark and co while developing 'the face book'.

The general idea for me was to increase my knowledge of each portal by becoming a member. Strangely, many people have many reasons for being at the networks we choose (of all the thousands available). Yet, Facebook has somehow managed to become the benchmark for all social networking, followed by twitter, youtube and LinkedIn in second, third and fourth place respectively. The rest just get lost in the dirt.

What I never imagined was that companies would also then consider the importance of these 'communication tools', as it were, and offer jobs for people to sit and 'blog' or 'tweet'. It's like getting a job as a game tester at EA Sports or Rockstar Games (a job I almost got long time ago!). As I sit here writing my new testament for taking blogging seriously again, I do so with the idea that I am connected everywhere with a profile on LinkedIn, a YouTube account, a twitter account, a facebook profile (private so bugger off!), a Google Buzz account as of late and now even a rejuvenated blogger account (under consideration for migration to wordpress).

Off all the accounts, the one I am still not comfortable publicly sharing is my facebook profile - even though I have water-tight viewing rights for non-friends, limited profile viewing enabled, etc etc...could it be that the privacy issue had an impact on me? What have I got to hide? Who am I running from? I mean...after all, every one of these accounts is integrated with the other, so what's the big deal? I mean, if I decide to run for President, I'll have to google myself a hundred times (using different search strings) to make sure there is no incriminating evidence floating in the 'world wide web'.

Something to think about? We will touch upon other elements of Social Rage next time. Until then, follow me on twitter and retweet my posts or i'll limit your viewing rights on my FB profile and post a video response to your digital blasphemy, condemning you for all googleternity!

Cheers :)

Kiya Bola?: Ode to a colossus - Professor Khwaja Masud

Kiya Bola?: Ode to a colossus - Professor Khwaja Masud

Link to Professor Khwaja Masud's website - http://khwajamasud.wordpress.com/

Ode to a colossus - Professor Khwaja Masud

Dear Readers,

Below is an obituary that my father wrote and has shared with the papers to have published in honor of my wife's late Grandfather, Professor Khwaja Masud.

I don't believe that I can express any better what I felt about him, over what my dear father has expressed in his own opinion. I am merely a conduit to a bond between them.

He passed away on Saturday, January 16th, 2009 at around 8:45 PM at Poly Clinic Hospital, Islamabad. He was a mighty 87 years old.

To read more about his life, please visit this article by Dawn News: http://bit.ly/7QoYFr

May God have mercy on his soul and grant him eternal peace.

Regards,

S. Zohare Haider

___________________________________________________________________________________

A tribute by Air Cmdre (R) S. Sajad Haider

Since Quaid-e-Azam’s demise, only a few men in Pakistan’s 62 year history have provided intellectual and moral enlightenment to young and old as did the gaunt but intellectually an invincible icon, Professor Khwaja Masud.

This noble teacher taught hundreds of his students to think original and aim high to become achievers; contemporaneously he motivated and synergised the neglected and exploited working class to understand their stature in society as well as to stand up for their rights. His human endeavour went beyond mere academics because he had felt a compelling passion to apply his teachings and beliefs to better the cause of the toiling labourer and peasant. His superior intellect, dedication and sterling character won hearts and minds of intelligentsia, friends, students and the dehumanized working labour class. Khwaja Masud was rewarded with awesome respect by every segment of society, witch-hunt during the dictatorial nightmare of Zia’s eon notwithstanding. But he did not relent and achieved what only a few others in the profession of education and helping the poor workers could rightly claim. He earned his lofty stature as the indomitable principled principal of Gordon College Rawalpindi.

It was during those tumultuous times of his life, during Zia’s tyrannical theocratic perversion when I first met him and his noble wife Salma Masusd, another stellar educationist. Both were under the ire of the dictator. My second meeting with Khwaja Sahib was quite amusing. I had met him to protest that my son had received harsh punishment in his hands at the Grammar school where he taught maths. Upon hearing my complaint, the tough professor roared at me and virtually ordered me to take my son out of his class because he was useless, inattentive and distractive. Destiny must have smiled at both him and me. Some 12 years later, Khwaja Sahib was somewhat circumspect when i proposed the hand of his favourite and brilliant grand daughter for my younger son. He warned my son to get his masters and PHD like his own sons to qualify for marrying his grand daughter.

I became his disciple after we were joined through this wedlock. It was a short but most proud relationship I developed with the icon. I was like a student each time we met and I listened to him in rapt attention. There was so much ebullience in those hours with him, yet it was like an ascent to a fountain of knowledge, about philosophy of life and nature; Socrates, Plato, Braham, Beethoven, Iqbal, Quaid-e-Azam and Faiz were jelled in an evolutionary aloft and then masterfully he would descend to bring the tormented present in perspective. But he was always optimistic about Pakistan’s future as long as the youth of the nation understood the value of knowledge and its strength for an evolution to have tryst with destiny with Jinnah’s vision as the beacon. That was his style of prose as well. I saw him with indomitable strength, physical and moral, and saw him fade away in front of my eyes last Sunday evening. He was in total control, a gentleman to his last breath and courageous even as he descended in to oblivion as his soul left his mortal remains.

I will miss Khwaja Masud as will kith and kin and thousands in Pakistan and around the world. His spirit and legacy will remain alive eternally like the unflattering flame of a candle in the darkness of our times. If we look up at heavens, there is a new shining star in the galaxy. May his soul rest in eternal peace in heavenly abode.

Sayed Sajad Haider
Air Commodore (R)
sajad.haider@gmail.com

18, Gomal Road, Sector –E-7
Islamabad