With an upsurge in crime rates across the city, I like many often wonder how we may actually react when a pistol is shoved into our face, many times I have resolutely decided never to resist for the sake of ones life but in a state of panic the mind reacts in a very strange way, read this narration from Khurram Siddiqui’s Blog for a very good insight on how the mind works in a crisis.

A few days ago my friend had an experience that many living in Karachi dread – mugging. The mugger took his cell phone at gunpoint. He placed his chromed pistol in front of my friend’s face, to which thankfully, my friend did not react aggressively. Soon after the incident I had a chat my friend and he told me that he felt frustrated because he “did not do anything.” But, of course, he realizes like most of us that any retaliation could lead to disaster.

According to Dave Grossman, author of ‘On Killing’, the optimal state is when the heart rate is between 115 and 145 beats per minute. “After 145,” Grossman says, “bad things begin to happen. Complex motor skills start to break down. At 175, we begin to see an absolute breakdown of cognitive processing. The forebrain shuts down, and the mid-brain — the part of your brain that is the same as your dog (all mammals have that part of the brain) — reaches up and hijacks the forebrain.”

Read the entire post at Khurram Siddiqui

Any Guesses?

Yesterday I had the chance to sit in on the live telecast speech by the three top leadership consultant gurus Ken Blanchard, Marcus Buckingham and Tom Peters. It was an event organized by Octara which took the initiative to host the satellite up-link at Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. The telecast started at 8:00pm sharp and lasted well past midnight ending at around 2:00am. and was being transmitted to over 60 countries across the globe with an estimated viewership of over a million people captivated for the 5 hours of the presentation.

Locally Octara had its own share of hiccups, as we were initially served with the Spanish translation for a good 20 odd minutes, it was rectified after a few frantic calls by the event manager to Luma Corp in the US. The attendees like myself had paid a hefty sum for attending this telecast, these kinks should have been ironed out by Octara well in advance serving top notch quality event management requires the agency to go the extra mile and not sit cross legged until the show has commenced. If that was any sign of things to come, it got repeatedly worse as Karachi Sheraton went through a series of three electrical blackouts which naturally knocked everything into the stone ages. I should not blame Octara for the KESC issues but it did cast a bad image into the mess. Each blackout took a good minute for the Sheraton’s generators to kick in and then another odd minute or so before the video signal was restored and projector lamps resume functioning.
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Almost everyday, while driving through through Shahrah e Faisal, I just cannot help noticing persistent jaywalkers!.

Almost everyday, someone runs across the road. Almost once a week, I see someone trying to cross the road while looking down at the road, or in the direction the traffic is GOING instead of oncoming traffic. A few even prefer to enjoy the breeze while standing between lanes.

Are we suicidal or just get the kicks out of scaring people who care about others lives???

Stand up comic Saad Haroon is hosting an Open Mic night next week! Details are as below:

Venue: Caffeine [Sea View]
Time: 8 PM Sharp
Date: Monday, May 1st 2006

Tickets are available at the door on a first come, first serve basis, hence get to the venue well before 8 PM!

Carrefour, an international chain of low price supermarkets is coming to Karachi. According to my info, they plan to set up 5-6 hypermarts in karachi.

The Carrefour busniess model is very simple, they buy enough bulk to sell it cheaper than the market. So if your local grocery store seels you your typical bar of soap for about Rs. 22, they might sell the same for Rs. 20.

Another very promising area of activity is the promotion of smaller industries. Carrefour tends to stock many products at lower prices under its own brand.

Looking forward to a whole new experience. Imtiaz Store: You guys better gear up.

For the past month, the papers were going wild about the cement manufacturers cartel and their deliberate attepmts to keep cement prices inflated without allowing imports. Thankfully yesterday, we saw a report on the reduction of cement prices by about Rs. 50 per bag.

The papers today are filled with reports on various construction projects under planning in the city. These incluse 2 luxury hotels (one the former Subzazar property at Sharah e Faisal.

Karsaz Flyover and Hassan Square Flyover, along with the Nazimabad and Ghareebabad Flyovers are waiting to take off the ground. The city Nazim, however, has been kind enough to ask for development and creation of alternate traffic routes BEFORE the construction on these projects starts off.

With so many projects going on simultaneously, I wonder how a person, who has to pass through even two of these construction sites will be able to manage his/her time.

I just hope that sanity prevails and while in traffic bottlenecks, motorists retain their positions in their respective lanes.

On another note, We, the residents of Karachi, that all these developments will actually add to time and fuel saving for commuters, instead of just highlighting a need to cater to another bottleneck at the landing points for these projects.

Spotted in Dhoraji… at one of those Uncle Gola stalls.
Us Pakistanis are quite innovative, you see. :p

My good friend Zain has started a really nice forum related to Technology in Pakistan, and one of the posts is a start at gathering the locations of all the wifi hotspots in Karachi. Give the forum a read and also try to update the list. It will be a very important resource for road warriors.

I & many of my friends just got this 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. The email sender S. Farhan Ahmed 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. The email is in detail & to prove the point it mentions the contact info even.

We would like to request any official from Dr. Essa Laboratory to verify or deny such incident in public interest. It’s the matter of great concern for general public. Please do so specially if someone is trying to defame you. Here is the email.
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