Any milk sprouting out from underneath these hills is unlikely, but what the bulldozers atop that mountain are trying to do is cut out a route to link ‘Shahrah e Noor Jehan’ with Orangi Town.

‘Pahar Ganj’ is home to migrants from N.W.F.P and Punjab. Lights reflecting from their homes at night make for a beautiful view. Whether or not these houses are legal or can be included in the countless other slums is a mystery to me. But that doesn’t stop these poor people from complaining. However, unlike the population displaced by the construction of Liyari Expressway, these homeowners (encroachers??) have not been promised a compensation. Whether or not they’re entitled to any is again debatable.

The Sindh Chief Secretary (CS) Ejaz Qureshi has taken serious notice of the allotment of billions of rupees worth of land in the city at highly concessional rates to “favourites” during the last few days of the Sindh government and directed the authorities concerned to stop this illegal practice immediately.

Sources disclosed that the CS took action on Saturday after receiving reports that the Board of Revenue (BoR) and scrutiny committee have cleared 150 cases of illegal allotment of worthy city land in just one month on the directives of Sindh Chief Minister (CM) Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim. (The News.)

The chief minister is part of the government set-up that the general has hailed as a success. It’s a good thing that this government wasn’t any more successful.

This is a picture outside a house in Gulshan Iqbal that supplies a well marketed brand of bottled water. The white mini truck is used to transport the packed bottles to the market. Over a period of time, I have noted activities around the place that strongly suggest that the water tanker is the ‘natural source’ from which the pure stuff oozes out.

Next time when you are about to drink the bottled water that strikes Norway to your thoughts, just remember the bowser in this picture and hope your glass of water is still safe!

Usually, we pick out certain posts from a blog but its rare to find a blog that finds a satirical view on our current political situation. From the Tangerine Courts is a Canada based blog and has some excellent commentary. The author talks about everyone, our political leaders, our president, looks back in the 90′s and motorcycle bound slogan shouters of karachi from that era. But as far as I’ve read, the media’s role in this entire fiasco has been spared. Suggested to us by a reader, who forgot to leave his/her name, the following description was given;

This is a new blog started by a Pakistani individual to discuss his viewpoint on the situations in Pakistan. If you like Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, you will appreciate this. It is a refreshing, funny, and intelligent piece of commentary and can provide some smiles out of a bleak situation. Some staunch political people might take offense, but still worth a good read nonetheless, please check it out.

Definitely worth a read.

A rip-off of the ‘I ♥ NY’, but effective nevertheless. This particular graffiti was pointed out by Saba and Sundas in a post on another graffiti appearing on the city walls.
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Guess away!

Yesterday, i wrote that only Geo was not airing, while other TV channels were slowly returning with their programming. A lot of you commented that Geo shouldn’t be allowed to air as it was biased and too negative for your liking. Looks like the govt. has listened to you grievance. Yesterday, Geo News and ARY One World were effectively shutdown internationally, with the Dubai Govt. closing them on pressure from Islamabad.

ARY is still broadcasting other channels in its portfolio, including The Music, HBO, QTV and FashionTV among others, while Geo has not channels on the cable with Geo TV, Geo News and Aag all being banned.

I wonder how this will affect the future of these networks. Your thoughts?

Going through SF each morning, specially though the 4 KM patch from FTC to Metropole is a real nerve wrecker. But do we really have to do it each morning?

Inspired by Farrukh’s Lifehacking post, anyone have any good ideas to get from Gulshan to II Chundrigar other than taking SF?

In my next post, i’ll share two routes i’ve found, but lets have yours first.

The first difficult decision faced while investing is the simple question of “Why should I invest? Shouldn’t I save this money now rather than hope I can enjoy it later?”

The simple answer is that there should be a balance. You should not try to spend all your money, and neither should you try to invest all your money. Now, the next question is that it is more enjoyable to spend money rather than saving it, so how can we make it more enjoyable and palatable for the common man to take out some money regularly from his meager salary and invest it?
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This morning, while channel surfing, i found quite a few local TV channels were again on air. Notable news channels among them were

1. Dawn News
2. Aaj TV
3. TV One
4. Dhoom TV
5. Indus News

While local entertainment channels were also pretty much there. Geo, however, is still off the air.