Battles at the Premier League
This mid-week in Premier League saw some interesting battles being fought at the top half of the table as well as between the relegation bound teams. It was also one of the rare occasions when the match day’s late kick-off (7:45 pm) nearly collided with the Transfer Day deadline that ended at 11:00 pm. All this made for an exciting day. Let’s start from football itself from the top half. Manchester City, fuelled by the Arab Oil-gazillions, started the week right at the top of the table and determined to tighten it grasp on the No.1 spot after being dumped out of the ...
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LUMUN or competitions that turn into a losing game
Two weeks ago, Jinnah International airport was deluged by nervous yet excited parents. “Kya aap ki beti bhi LUMUN ja rahi he?” (is your daughter going to LUMUN too?) they cried as they bumped into each other. School teams kept arriving in jam-packed buses, students streamed through security checks in their uniforms and blazers. They were headed for Lahore University of Management Sciences Model United Nations, an endeavour that consists of night-long research marathons on different countries, eating too much at Hardees, and chilling out at the free concerts. It is also incidentally a convergence of some of the country’s brightest, sharpest ...
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Wasim and Waqar: the deadly duo
In recent times, cricket has undergone a fast bowling renaissance of sorts. Watching James Pattinson harass a much vaunted Indian batting line-up with speed and bounce in Melbourne and Sydney was a sight to behold. Pattinson is just 21, and he along with fellow Australian Pat Cummins (18) and the South African duo of Vernon Philander (26) and Marchant De Langle (21), represent a growing young breed of top class fast bowling prospects. There is no dearth of fast bowling talent in Pakistan either. Junaid Khan and Wahhab Riaz, two of the more recent entrants into the Pakistani bowling hall ...
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The fall of Blackberry
Research in Motion (RIM) is a smartphone manufacturing Canadian firm, which has been operating since 1999. Its product, the Blackberry, is currently the fourth most popular smartphone in the world, with 11.7% of the market share. It sits behind Ericsson, Google, and Apple. This is surprising because Blackberry started as the market leader, introducing push e-mail, internet faxing, web browsing, and other wireless information services back in 2003. It started off as a professional smartphone and soon gained commendable publicity worldwide. However, lately the BlackBerry’s popularity has been declining significantly and it is losing market share, especially to the Android and iOS. So, ...
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Two Golds and five Silvers! Well done Pakistan
People view the IT and software industry of Pakistan as a fledgling market. It does not get a lot of media attention and there are many rumours and speculation about what is actually being developed in these offices. However, this industry has behemoth competition, not just from our neighbours, but within the region itself. Our IT and software sector has an organization, which acts as an umbrella body representing and grooming products and companies to pitch to the world, called P@SHA or Pakistan Software Houses Association. A month ago P@SHA held the ICT awards in Pakistan, where they selected 18 ...
Read Full PostSpeaking imperfectly among the perfect
She said “core”. Not “choir” but “core”. The person she said it to was perplexed for a minute, before it dawned on them that the word “choir” had been mangled. As the story made the rounds in school, for a little while, everyone listened, chuckled and was amused by the girl who said core not choir. It was an easy enough mistake to make in a country where English is not a first language for many. It was cruel and mean-spirited to make fun of that girl. Some people would argue that they were just school kids. But would you ...
Read Full PostIs it asli? : Eating ‘Karachi’s mashoor Peshawari Ice-cream’…in Peshawar
Rather go to Lahore than trek to Nazimabad for Hardee’s? Rather wait for the rush of people to subside than wait for 50 minutes in the line outside? Not a problem — the best feeling of watching the golden star installed on the top of restaurant is that somewhere, somehow, a knock off golden star is being constructed. And there’s nothing the real Hardee’s can do about it. Welcome to the barely there-copyright land. “Hamari sirf eik branch hai” is about the best you can say to stop it. Actually, it’s about the only thing that people end up saying. It’s printed on every ...
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Money 101: Workplace matters
The workplace is somewhere we head to in order to earn money and yet discussing money in the workplace is one of the most difficult topics to bring up. Do your own thing Starting from something basic as lunch orders – in most urban workplaces the current trend is to order in and split the costs. In this situation the financially prudent individual who brings lunch from home or wants to pay exactly Rs99 for his one order of fries can find himself/herself being labeled as a bad sport, kanjoos and so on. And given that you end up spending 9-10 ...
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Are you an ‘educated’ predator?
Education – slick, elite, expensive education – for which, I attend classes, take exams and tap a phenomenal fraction of my parent’s hard-earned money. Education – there is no word so grotesquely misunderstood. No idea so ill-expressed. Little does anyone realise that the mad rat-race to score better grades does not ‘educate.’ On the contrary, the cut-throat dynamics of the relative grading system merely give us a taste of the usual rat-racing, throat-cutting, leg-pulling and back-stabbing competition that the corporate culture is characteristic of. Relative grading gives you the grade, but it ingrains in you the idea that your success is tied ...
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They return as heroes
It was a match that will live long in my memory. Pakistan slipped out of the World Cup after a nerve-wracking loss to archrivals India.They now return home as heroes nonetheless. The defeat is not under debate: we lost fair and square. However, the team that returns home is now a special one. They are special because they wore green and marched into the yard in Mohali, with their heads high, sending shock waves of intimidation to their opponents. Shahid Afridi’s leadership and the team’s performance in the 2011 World Cup was awe-inspiring. They continued to defy all odds, defeating the unlikeliest ...
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