Posts from — October 2007

Traffic laws are optional in Pakistan. There are lanes, but people may or may not drive completely within a lane. There are traffic lights, but some don’t wait until the light turns green. Along the roads, there are signs pleading for drivers to follow the laws, but there is no point. By the time a good number of traffic lights were erected over the years, people were already set in there ways. Most people still don’t even wear seatbelts (the older cars don’t even have them available), allowing more people than the number of seats available to squeeze in a car and travel.

If you do wait obediently at a traffic light at a red and wait for the countdown to the green (there really is a digital countdown) and there is no traffic from the other roads, the cars behind you will honk until you go.

Beggars walk around stopped cars, tapping windows and asking for money while drivers and passengers make sure the doors are locked and ignore them. All types of people, men and women, young and old, walk around traffic and try to sell various wares to people in cars. I wonder what kind of living this type of vendor makes.

They all seem to know what they are doing with their crazy driving and incessent honking. I wonder how my uncle’s driver would function in a setting where you didn’t have to manuever around cars and people all the time. One of my cousins drives like a maniac, weaving at top speeds at close distances. He literally scared the hell out of all of us. After one such ride in which we all thought death was imminent, he turned around and said “Did you just hear a voice?” “Yeah,” I replied. “The voice of Allah.”

I can’t understand why something about this can’t be done. According to my cousins, there has been more traffic congestion lately, which promises to get worse. The problem is that they have added all these provisions that are supposed to help traffic, such as traffic lights, but people were already set in there ways by the time they are told to obey laws. Also, there don’t seem to be any traffic cops. They need to regulate this. This can’t be ok.

I think when I get back in the States, I need to watch myself while driving and make sure none of the driving from here has rubbed off on me. If I cut you off and drive through a red, my advanced apologies.

Friends back home said to take advantage of the restaurants in Pakistan and eat out often. This is due to the fact that all the restaurants are by default halal and we can therefore eat whatever meat they serve. There was one place in particular that everyone mentioned- Arizona Grill.

I treated everyone here last week and we all loved it. By our standards the prices were good, about $6 for steak. We all loved our meals and vowed to come back and specifically have the steak that my brother in law had.

We went again on Saturday, this time as treat from one cousin who was going to leave that day and hadn’t been out with us the previous time. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. After waiting for seats and finally giving our order, we waited for our food, which included four Arizona Fire Steaks. Instead, they brought out American Steaks, which had a different taste to them. We sent them back. Meanwhile, one waiter brought out a blended drink for my cousin. In the process of setting her drink down on the table, the tray he was holding tipped, leading to 6 frozen blended drinks spilling on my brother.

I understand that accidents happen but the waiter couldn’t have looked less unemotional about the whole thing and no one else seemed to care. We had to move to another table while my brother cleaned up. We got our steaks then, which was what they had sent in front of us before with the onions scraped off. My sister and I were getting upset, in English though. One cousin looked at us and asked if we wanted him to translate. So  he asked the guy why they didn’t train their people and all that. It was such a bad experience. The only saving grace - the cousin who treated liked her steak.

Later that night, all of the cousins got together and went out to another restaurant called Gunsmoke. This was a Texan themed restaurant where the waiters were dressed like cowboys, threw the menus on the table (the waiters are supposed to be rude), and you eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. A very interesting experience. I was still full off my steak from before so I just got a pina colada and ate a bit of everyone else’s food. It was a lot of fun and I had a great time.

Unfortunately, I sort of got sick from the Pina Colada and am now on the Pakistan Diet, the details of which I will not go into here.

Goodbye.

Ok, so here’s the thing: I wrote a post a few days ago but then went I clicked the ‘publish’ button it didn’t go through because the modem chose that time to conk out. When it came back on, I found that only part of my post is saved so I tried rewriting it. It still wouldn’t go through so I gave up. And then the power went out.

So here’s a summary of what I wrote before: Pakistan is interesting. People more annoyed with Bhutto’s visit than anything because all the shops closed and weddings were postponed. It’s been fun seeing the cousins again. It’s hot. The electricity goes out now and then. Gulab jamun in Pakistan tastes nothing short of awesome. It’s hot.

So that’s the gist of what my first post while in Pakistan was supposed to be about.

Beyond that, all is well for the most part.

using free internet. holding nephew. bye.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan today from her self imposed exile. Because she wanted to create a lot of fanfare, she decided to drive around Karachi in a convoy. The police asked her to skip it all because of bomb threats, but she decided to go through with it. Not the best idea.

First, the article listed the number of casualties as under 100, then 108, and then 125. Then, they changed it to ‘more than 100.’ InshAllah (God Willing), this is the only incident and we won’t have to worry about anything while we are there.

I apologize to my faithful readers (all 3 of you) for not writing for a while. I’ve been pretty busy at work and also getting ready to go to Pakistan.

We’re going by Singapore Airlines, which I haven’t been on since 1990. I already checked out the website and found out which movies will be playing on the plane. Does that action make me a dork? Also everyone in Economy seating gets a 10.6-inch, high resolution, LCD screen.

It looks like this:

Alas, first class gets a 23 inch screen.

Ok, ok, back to Pakistan,

I put together a list of goals for my trip:

Relax
Read
Don’t act like a fool in the markets
Try to take tons of pictures
Shoot some video with my brand spankin’ new hand-me-down camcorder
Find a place to get a mocha
Just nod politely and smile if a relative says that I got fat
Enjoy the trip

The funny part is that I am really looking forward to the trip back home since I will be by myself. We’re all coming home at different times so I get to make the trek from Pakistan to Singapore and then to SFO on my own.

I feel like I will be getting a fresh start when I get back from my trip. I have a mental ‘to do’ list for when I get back that I’m really looking forward to tackling (it involves getting a Macbook Pro. w00t!).

Well, this will be my last post before my trip. I will try to blog from Pakistan but I don’t know what my internet situation will be. Until next time . . . just click on this picture of me if y’all really miss me.

Thanks.

Oh and just for clarification. . .

I’M NOT GOING TO PAKISTAN TO GET MARRIED, OK??!!

Apparently there has been some confusion.

*sigh*

“Eid ul-Fitr” was one of the Top 10 Searches on Yahoo. Check it out:



Number 9! Right under, um, uh, *cough* “Fruit Smoothie Recipes.”

Oh well.

In your face Navy Football!!

Ann Coulter, well known hate monger (not my words) has a new book out which promises to be exactly like her old ones - an avenue in which to put down liberals while preaching her own brand of neocon vitriol. Unfortunately, that means she’s making her round of talk shows to promote her “work.”

Here’s a sample from a recent interview on CNBC with Donny Duetsch, host of The Big Idea , transcripted byMedia Matters:

DEUTSCH: That isn’t what I said, but you said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or –

COULTER: Yeah.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Well, it’s a lot easier. It’s kind of a fast track.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Yeah. You have to obey.

DEUTSCH: You can’t possibly believe that.

COULTER: Yes.

A blogger on DailyKos has an article about this that makes a rightful point:

“The absurd part about all of this is not that a serial scenery-chewer like Coulter would say shocking things. The absurd part is that, in spite of all the things Coulter says all the time, she still gets invited by major news outlets to make those comments. Every. Damn. Time.”

So here’s my question - why do people not view her the same way they do extremists of other religions? She stands for hate and is against everything that America is supposed to stand for.

She’s also part of the tour for David Horowitz’s completely silly “Islamofascism Awareness Week,” a thinly disguised forum for bigotry gracing a university campus near you during the week of October 22nd.

10 Bucks says she doesn’t have a reflection.

I leave you with this exchange, also from the Media Matters transcription of the same interview, regarding her views on liberal mixed race couples:

COULTER: You walk past a mixed-race couple in New York, and it’s like they have a chip on their shoulder. They’re just waiting for somebody to say something, as if anybody would. And –

DEUTSCH: I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with that at all. Maybe you have the chip looking at them. I see a lot of interracial couples, and I don’t see any more or less chips there either way. That’s erroneous.

COULTER: No. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you’re lying.

DEUTSCH: Oh, because of some Seinfeld episode? OK.

What an argument folks!

DC Comics recently came out with an animated straight to DVD movie titled Superman: Doomsday. This is meant to be an adaptation of the Death of Superman storyline from the comics, which began in 1993 and ended in 1994. This animated movie was created by the same people responsible for the Superman, Batman, and Justice League cartoons. However, it doesn’t quite take place in the same universe.

I got the DVD a couple of weeks ago but put off watching it because it’s Ramadan. I ended up watching it Saturday night after I broke my fast in the evening because I got nostalgic for the Superman animated series after catching the end of an episode on cable. So what follows is a look at the movie, with comparisons to the comics. You really don’t have to read what follows if you’re not interested in the topic. Really folks, turn back now or you can’t complain about how much thought I’ve given to this:

[Read more →]

Hey, it’s officially my first post on politics!

So here’s the thing - I’ve been struggling to figure out which Democratic candidate to back. I haven’t been able to muster up support for any of the three main Democratic candidates: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. The three of them have some aspect to them that bother me, especially Clinton. One of the biggest things is their stance on Iraq. Yes, they want to pull out troops from Iraq, but they want some sort of presence still there. That’s just one of the issues I have.

There’s a really good article about this on The Nation titled How Different are the Top Three Dems? The author is trying to figure out who to vote for as well. She then says she might go for the candidate she actually agrees with, Dennis Kucinich. I find this very interesting because I really just learned about this guy a few days ago when I was listening to NewsHour on PBS (88.5 FM in the Bay Area). This guy’s stance on just about every issue coincides with my own: Immediate withdrawal from Iraq without any kind of American presence, universal health care, and so many other issues. Here’s what he has to say about Israel and Palestine:

But the United States must take an even-handed approach. We have to do everything we can to help Israel survive. And Israelis perceive this existential threat; we must be attuned to that. At the same time, the Palestinians are crying for justice that they can’t receive with walls and fences and losing their property.

There has to be a United States presence that assures the survival of the Israelis and the rights of the Palestinians. And, frankly, here again, I’m the only one running for president who’s even talking about this.

Basically, Kucinich is talking about a lot of stuff that the other Democratic candidates, including the top 3, are not talking about. Read the whole transcript of Kucinich on Newshour here. It’s really good stuff folks. This guy is getting my vote.