The story of “How I didn’t leave Pakistan”

22nd of June, 07.20 AM: the date of my departure from Karachi towards Doha, then Istanbul, then finally Bucharest.

22nd of June, 04.15 AM: I’m on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. I change my Pakistani currency into dollars, I light up a cigarette and think of the great moments had in Karachi

22nd of June, 04.25 AM: I pass one security check point and head to Qatar Airlines officers

22nd of June, 04.30 AM: After I weigh my luggage I find out that it has 10 Kg over the limit and I start thinking of how much would I have to pay extra. The guy doesn’t let me finish my thought and comes up with something like 9000 Rupees the equivalent of 110 USD

22nd June, 4.27 AM: My sharp senses notice that when the neighbouring luggage of a fellow citizen is taken of from the weighing machine my luggage doesn’t have 10 Kg extra anymore but 6 Kg instead. I notify the guy from Qatar office and he seems to restart some calculations. The result: I don’t have to pay anything!

22nd of June, 4.35 AM: I got my Boarding passes and then I loaded my luggage on the outgoing conveyor belt and got my control receipts.

22nd of June, 4.38 AM: I’m heading towards Gate nr. 24 but first I have to pass Customs of course. There were 2 types of Custom wickets  – one for Pakistani passports and another one for foreign passport. I obviously chose the foreigner’s wicket.

22nd of June, 4.43 AM: I arrive in front of the Immigration Lady Officer, I show her my passport and Boarding pass. She looks through them and notices that my Pakistani visa expired a couple of days before. I say to myself that this shouldn’t represent an issue as I knew that I had a 2 weeks period to re-new it or leave the country.

22nd of June, 4.45 AM: The lady officer doesn’t seem impressed with my explanation and tries to say something but English was not her best ally right now. In fact her colleague from Pakistani passports tells me in a fluent nice English language to wait a bit.

22nd of June, 4.55 AM: After waiting for 10 minutes a mustached Immigration officer appears and addresses some questions such as “Who am I?”, “What was the purpose of my visit in Pakistan?” and some others. He also doesn’t seem impressed with my answers but now I already now that this might happen because his lack of English skills.

22nd of  June, 5.05 AM: After leaving for a few minutes with my passport and boarding passes he comes back without boarding passes, and with a big stamp on my passport: OFF LOADED!!!

22nd of June, 5.06 AM: The mustached dumb-ass (I changed his status meanwhile) tells me “Come, come!” and I understand I have to follow him. He takes me into a Customs office where there was another mustached officer and a guy with a pajamas blouse, bell-bottoms pants and slippers snoring his heart out on a couch. I repeat the same story over and over again to the new mustached dumb-ass (his status was also changed quickly) of course interrupted at some points by strong and loud rounds of snoring.

22nd of June, 5.20 AM: The mustached dumb-ass nr.2 finds himself in trouble with my case so he decides to wake up the snoring dude which in fact was his superior.

22nd of June, 5.20 AM – 06.20 AM: The snoring guy first wakes up, then he is updated on the issue, he barely moves from one end to another of the room, he looked for one pen for 5 minutes and solved nothing. He gave me back my passport, and said I cannot leave Pakistan since my visa expired.

22nd of June, 06.20 AM: a guy appears with my extra 6 Kg luggage which was called back. He hands me over a receipt and then asks for a tip, which of course in the heat of the moment I found it to be totally outrageous. I tried to say something to him but the only English word he knew was “tip”. Of course, I didn’t tip him.

22nd of June, 06.30 AM – 07.00 AM: I am on my way back to the Intern’s House where Jeremy greets me with the traditional: “What the hell?!?”

22nd of June: 07.10 AM – 09.40 AM: I went to bed dreaming of heading back to my country.

22nd of June, 09.40 AM – now: I checked with Qatar, I can leave Pakistan on Thursday, 25th, of course only if by then I get my visa extended (AIESEC is working on it). Qatar guys also became dumb-asses when they told me on the phone that my round trip ticket to Pakistan is expired since May  – and this considering the fact that the round trip on the ticket is 22nd of June first of all, and second of all – in the morning when I got my boarding passes there was no such issue.

LESSONS to keep in mind: Pakistan might be the only place in the world where if your visa expires you have to spend some more time in the country; the immigration officers are so stupid that they are not worth getting mad at; when people would ask me if I want to leave Pakistan then I would say for sure yes, considering that during the last week I kept telling people around me that I would wanna stay some more and here I am;

Me in Islamabad and Murree

After a 40 minutes bumpy flight from Lahore to Islamabad, here I was in the capital of Pakistan, a young city, built especially to serve as a capital as  Karachi already became to crowded, to exposed, and it was not close to the center of the nation.

So, in the 1960’s the Pakistani Government decided and started to build this city, near the town of Rawalpindi, in the middle of the woods. As per this reason, Islamabad is one of the greenest and well organized cities in South Asia. It is said to count up to 1.5 million people nowadays and if you would ask somebody from Karachi or Lahore how the life in the Capital is, the most probable answer you would get is: “boring”. You could say so, but then again what city doesn’t seem boring compared to the near 18 M people, agitated and nervous Karachi or 10 M people, fascinating and filled with history Lahore?

I myself liked Islamabad very much. It is somehow quiet, impressive through its organized city plan or through some majestic pieces of modern architecture such as Faisal Mosque, Pakistani Monument or Saudi-Pak Building.

One of the 3 days I spent in Islamabad was almost completely wasted as I had to confirm the already bought tickets to Gilgit – a pit stop on my way to Hunza Valley. I stayed 7 hours in the crowded, noisy and hot office of Pakistani International Airways (PIA) in Rawalpindi to get my flight tickets confirmed. It was the first time in my life I saw people fighting to get some plane tickets (the tickets to Northern Areas – Gilgit and Skardu – are limited), the first time in my life I saw an Airliner Office operating in such an archaic manner (imagine a countryside railway station from Eastern Europe and maybe you will get half of the big picture ) and the first time when I was confused several times to a Pakistani Pathan – inhabitant of the Northern parts of Pakistan with the colour of the skin a little brighter.

Rawalpindi is a city that doesn’t say very much, but it was nice to walk around it and experience some genuine Pakistani daylife. Almost forgot: in Rawalpindi I saw a Pakistani porn Cinema , I had a nice cold beer at Pearl Continental and I saw the place where Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

Next morning, my flight to Gilgit was expecting me… but then guess what?!? After waiting for seven hours in PIA office of Rawalpindi to confirm the ticket, in the morning I arrived in the airport to find out that the flight was canceled in the last minute. Facing such a “disaster” the only logical solution was to join the Lahore interns (Matt, Laura and Stefanie) in their trip to Murree – and so I did.

Murree is a Pakistani mountainous touristic resort 70 km away from Islamabad. It was not as spectacular and impressive as Hunza Valley would have been but still it was a very interesting experience thanks to its markets, heights or people.

Overall, this trip around Pakistan was one of the highlights of my internship, either it was hot or cold (Murree – 10 degrees Celsius and rain during night time), plains or mountains; it gave a better perspective over Pakistan and also the occasion of some new nice friends . More pictures you can find either here or here.

The “Garden of Mughals”

My experience in Pakistan is coming to an end unfortunately. Being in my last days here in Pakistan, my company – GlaxoSmithKline – thought it would be nice for me to travel around the country a bit, to get a deeper sight into Pakistani culture, society and beauties. The plan was made for me to travel to Hunza Valley, one of the most beautiful places on Earth, thought to be the the legendary valley of Shangri-La. On my way to Hunza I was supposed to visit Lahore and Islamabad, this meaning that I would see the the cultural capital of the country and also the administrative capital of Pakistan.

The experience itself was amazing and I would like to start with telling the story of me travelling to Lahore – also known as “The Garden of Mughals” because of its rich Mughal heritage.

I had only one day reserved for Lahore, and for sure I missed a lot of interesting spots. In fact… I saw only 3 up to 4 local attractions. In stead I was fascinated to how different this city can be to what I imagined it would be. I mean, I know Karachi, I stood here for almost 3 months but Lahore is so different and I somehow feel sorry that I didn’t had the chance of experiencing more of it, but at the same time I’m thankful for being there even for one day only.

The history of Lahore is pretty rich in facts and interesting happenings. It is said to be there for the last 4000 years at least and that its founder is Loh, son of Rama (hindu epic hero from Ramayana). More recently though, meaning in the last 500 years, it was ruled by Mughals (it was capital of Mughal Empire for a few years), Sikhs and British. Now its the second largest city of Pakistan with 10 million people, capital of the State Province of Punjab, a symbol for Pakistani independence and the cultural heart of the country.

In Lahore I was accommodated at the interns house (thanks for Laura, Matt and Stephanie ) and with the huge contribution of some friends (Arsalaan, Talha and Syed) I visited some important sites such as Badshahi Mosque – an impressive sized and extremely beautiful mosque build by the Mughals, the Lahore Fort – the place where every  power which was present in this city set its print in the architecture and aspect of the place or Cooco’s Cafe (in the photo) - a famous restaurant in the Old Town, built exactly near the former Red Light District of Lahore. We also spotted Minar-e-Pakistan – The Independence Monument (which was closed because people have a tendency of killing themselves by throwing themselves from the heights of the Monument) and The Sikh Mausoleum of  Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

I found Lahore to be more clean and neat than Karachi, but also hotter (at least this time of the year). The temperature reached at some point 47-50 degrees while we were roaming around the city and for instance when we were at Badshahi Mosque we thought that our bare-feet got burnt.

If you ever get in Lahore keep in mind that is a place that will kindly welcome you, it will show majestic pieces of history, culture and architecture or it will impress you with its immense dishes – which I think they taste better than in any other place in Pakistan (don’t miss the Food Street ) 

You can find my Lahore pictures right over here and I shall be back with some information regarding the rest of the trip as well

[RO] Autocratia lui Papura

“Tara lui Papura Voda”  – este o expresie (cu vadita tenta ironica) foarte des folosita de romanul de rand pentru a-si manifesta nemultumirea, surprinderea, satisfactia, etc vis-a-vis de un anume eveniment al carui martor este.

Dar cine este acest Papura de fapt si de drept? Conform unor adepti ai teoriei conspiratiei, Papura este cel care, din umbra, detine cu adevarat controlul in Romania, aflandu-se in spatele tuturor deciziilor la nivel inalt, controland cu autoritate si cu o mana de fier parghiile puterii, institutiile de stat, media si chiar mediul de afaceri romanesc. Dar se pare ca cei mai multi dintre noi stim deja lucrul asta, de la mic la mare, indiferent ca ai 4 clase sau esti absolvent de facultate, de la tara sau de la oras, cu totii cand vedem vreo minunatie (groapa in asfalt, maneaua din BMW, stirea de la 5, balacareala de la Talk-Show) stim sa  i-o atribuim direct lui Papura – “tara lui Papura-Voda”.

Alti teoreticieni spun ca, din contra, Papura-Voda nu este decat o marioneta a unui sistem mult mai complex condus dintr-o umbra si mai profunda de unul care isi zice “Peste”, un prosper om de afaceri, cu identitate necunoscuta dar a carui avere este impresionanta. Detine sosele, institutii de invatamant, armata, trusturi de presa, echipe de fotbal si  care are acoliti in posturi cheie cu ajutorul carora manipuleaza sistemul. Acest “Peste” nu este nici el chiar invaluit in mister in ochii romanului (papureanului), iar proprietatile si tentaculele sale sunt cvasi-cunoscute de-a lungul si de-a latul tarii: autostrada lui Peste, echipa lui Peste, facultatea lui Peste, armata lui Peste, ziarul lui Peste si chiar ministrul lui Peste sau politistul lui Peste.

In schimb, Peste, din cate se pare este amenintat la varful puterii de un frate al sau mai putin bogat dar in plina ascensiune caruia i se zice “Peste Prajit”. Acesta, prin metode doar de el cunoscute, a reusit sa puna mana pe multe din avutiile si proprietatile fratelui sau si din cate se zvoneste deja il controleaza pe seful statului, Papura-Voda, astfel incat se prea poate ca in viitorul nu foarte indepartat sa intrezarim o optica noua in societatea romaneasca (papureana).

Care optica? Optica asta a noastra autohtona de ne indeamna intr-o maniera aproape sadica la ignoranta, delasare, “jemenfishism” creand in acelasi timp un repertoriu bogat de vorbe de duh cum ar fi:

- “ca n-o fi dracu’ asa de negru”, “lasa-o bai, ca merge asa”, “ce-am avut si ce-am pierdut”, “rau cu rau dar mai rau e fara rau”, “de nu curge, pica”, “decat codas la oras, mai bine-n satul tau fruntas”, etc

…dar in acelasi timp, ca si papureni, suntem si din cale-afara de mandri de noi, de realizarile noastre, de terisoara noastra si stim ca suntem “cei mai tari din parcare”,  “ca la noi la nimenea” si ca nimic pe lume nu ne lipseste, de unde si expresia: “…asta ne mai lipsea” (ca in rest avem de toate, adica).

Insa, chiar si asa, Tara lui Papura Voda prospera si va prospera in continuare de pe urma activitatilor de frecat menta, duda sau mangalul (la rece sau la cald), fratii Peste vor face parte in continuare din peisajul cotidian, iar liderul Voda (marioneta sau nu) va manui cu abilitate destinele poporului, plimbandu-se prin gradina cu loboda a Palatului sau.

Nota: Lasand gluma si ironia la o parte, Papura-Voda = Voda Stefanita Lupu, domn al Moldovei (1659-1661) si fiu al lui Vasile Lupu, in timpul caruia datorita unei secete cumplite, foametea a lovit tara iar oamenii au fost nevoiti sa se hraneasca chiar si cu paine facuta din faina de papura, de unde si nefericita porecla a domnitorului.

A Passionate Night

I’m still in bed, and all I can think of is you, all I can think of is the last night and my desire to hold and crush you by my chest is overwhelming! You suddenly came to me in the heat of the night and what happened next I will remember for a long time, as long as the unforgettable sensations are still with me. You came out of nowhere with no fear and no shame and I found you touching my body… you felt my indifference and then you bit me with no mercy, making me go insane… we tossed all night like in some kind of a crazy game and you astound me with your passion and lust. I finally fell asleep almost at sun rise, I felt jaded and still I could feel you near me…

When I woke up, I looked after you but the only signs I could get from the last night are the bed sheets all around me and the scars covering my guilty body; tonight I am going to pretend to be asleep, and I’m going to wait for you to reappear… but this time  I will get you, you fucking ruthless mosquito!!!