When I first saw Zong’s ad, I was really fascinated with the brand and liked their campaign style and execution. I even went to the extent of finding out which company made this for China Mobile; its Adetude. However, a friend of mine pointed out a video which opened my eyes. Their TVC is a total rip-off of Dolphin Telecommunication Provider–an old UK-based company–which initiated with specific Services to Corporate Sector. See for yourself:

So, are we that dry in coming up with creative ideas that sell?

Hint by Farnaz Shama

Previous links: Zara hat ke, Cellular Appetite

Despite repeated rhetoric by the authorities (March 31, 2007: No leniency in plastic bag ban says Sindh Minister for Environment and Alternative Energy, Dr Saghir Ahmed, April 30, 2007: Drive against plastic bags intensified, city district government claims, March 17, 2007:Plastic bag transportation in and out of the city to be checked says city nazim Mustafa Kamal), it has become increasingly apparent that the environment is the last thing on their agenda. Since the ban against plastic bags below the 30 micron weight limit was put into place last year, both the local city district and provincial governments have come out several times with tall claims about strict enforcement of the ban. Yet we see in practice that their claims couldn’t be further from the truth. (more…)

Few among us know that May 12 also marks the death anniversary of the People’s Poet Habib Jalib apart from what it is now known for. I shall try to do a detail post then but for now here is a song that is being seen quite regularly. Incidentally it also depicts the current situation except that its sola (16) carore and not dus (10) carore. The new ministers and advisor’s have(are) taken(ing) oath these days and so Habib’s poetry is as valid as ever. “Main Nay Kaha” is a satirical poem called “Musheer” (Advisor). Mr. M bokhari has done his bit to put the audio into text here in comment section.
Audio DOWNLOAD


Credits:
Mainay Uss Say Yeh Kaha - Habib Jalib
Vocals - Shahram Azhar , Music - Taimur Rahman , Backing Vocals - Mahvash Waqar , Director Producer - Taimur Khan

The administration of this city is dheet no doubt but people like me are even dheetar than them. Till they understand and implement a proper Public transport system and stop flooding our already-ugly city with more cars we(i) shall keep on highlighting this issue. Now do i need to explain this image?

This image shows the comparative amount of space required to transport the same number of people by car and bus. Its a photo from Muenster Planning Office.

[Credit: Doctor]

Today was world dance day and the significance of classical dance, in our culture, heritage and through the history was brought under the spotlight by Sheema Kermani, in a small café “The Second Floor” in Karachi.

The event kicked off with a brief history of classical dance which dates back to fifth millennium B.C. since then different forms of dance flourished and evolved in the region into what we see as classical dance today. The movements and body gestures one sees in different schools of classical dances can be recognized sculpted into the ruins found through out the Indian sub-continental region including the Indus civilization and at several other places in Pakistan which links  classical dance closely and undoubtedly to our own history and heritage. 

Classical dance unlike other pop-dances of today requires a proper training, it is a meticulously defined form of dance witch can only be performed after years of hard work and total dedication to this art, through which an artists can express stories, feelings, cultural values and so much more to it’s audience with great sophistication and grace.

At the end of the event a small demonstration of the art to further highlight the points included in the lecture by Sheema Kermani held the audience completely spell bound and one could easily trace joy, happiness, wonder, heartbreak and all in her meaningful facial expression, hand and body gestures and foot steps each of them in complete harmony with the music.

Classical dance is a refined form of art, which is an undeniable part of our heritage and culture. In a classical dance performance one could easily find stories, beauty, love, sadness and even terror but the only things which are untraceable in this refined art form is the chaos, vulgarity and a clash of our cultural values which we see today in almost every popular dance performance extravagantly fed to the general public by our media and pop artists. 

Today on the world dance day so lets not disown what’s our.

I drive a car with CNG (as does a majority of the population in Karachi). However, one trend that I have noticed is that CNG pump people tend to round up the amount to the nearest rupee when you pay. Even though it makes a little sense when you are dealing with cash, they do the same thing when using prepaid cards.

There is one specific PSO pump at the foot of Karsaz flyover on Shara-e-Faisal which I pass daily on the way to work. Because it is mostly empty at the time I pass it (around 7:30am), I tend to fill up if I am low on CNG. Further, I have a PSO fuel card (thanks UBL Credit Card!) which I sometimes use to pay. Today, the amount was 168.76, and the guy had charged me 169.00 (on the fuel card). When I asked him why he didn’t charge 168.76, he said something about them not having the correct system to process decimal places. I got out and showed him the decimal point on the keypad of the machine, and then he sheepishly admitted that it is their usual practice to round up. He also said that they round down if the fractional part is less than 50 paisa, but I have never seen this personally except for at a few pumps. Mostly these people just round up.

I know that after I left, they must have been wondering what a cheapskate I am to be complaining about 24 paisas, but my question is this: even though it is just a matter of a few paisas, is it right to do this? What are your thoughts?

I came across this advertisement / piece of information in a local newspaper lying in the pile of junk. This picture is around 1 month old, I don’t exactly remember the date, but its probably published on 22nd of March, 2007. The title of the advertisement attracted my attention, I read it, and was very sad. :’((

Although the deceased is from a well-known family, but I did not expect DHL to promote this information in such a manner. A quarter page add costs around 300K ++ on Sundays. I was just thinking what if they had donated 300,000 rupees to some poor, the information of death could have made up an entire life of a poor person or probably lots and lots of them.

There are times when you get frustrated with the system. Things are not delivered in time, post in slow, traffic sucks and consumer services too. It’s too hot and weather is killing you. You’ve a bad headache and do not want to go to office. If you’ve reached it, you want to take an early off. Problems, frustration, part and parcel of a karachiite’s life.

Clearly, we do get frustrated over a lot of factors happening around us. However, seldom one gets saved from a looming issue. This account is of such an incident.

(more…)

Seems a bit shady to me….what kind of marketing financial institution is going out and publicly asking peole to come have their debts written off?

 
Plagiarism is the word, our leading newspapers may spell it C-o-n-v-e-n-i-e-n-c-e (due to easy availability) but it’s Plagiarism and nothing more or less. The practice is getting very common in this country several low-budget magazines and newspapers are literary living on plagiarism but it feels really dark when such a breach of journalistic ethics comes from a Pakistan’s leading news paper, Dawn. On the 7 of April in a weekly issue of their Business and Reviews section appeared a picture, a picture which was originally taken by me and was used in one of my posts at KMB. This picture printed in monochrome had a barely visible KMB monogram and the portion where I had originally mention my name and the date the shot was taken on was so blurred that the information was totally illegible. There were no image credits in print anywhere in the article or by the picture, we were not notified and no permissions were asked for. The articles and the images shared on KMB are governed by Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported ) and the attributions allow sharing only for only non commercial purposes. But the newspaper is a commercial entity.  

But it’s really not about my rights being violated, but more importantly it is about a leading newspaper which is out there to set an example for others and sadly it does not follow basic journalistic ethics it’s self. No wonder we are a country known for frauds, cheating, and pirating all over the world.