City journalists (The News, Daily Times, Dawn) are/were of the view that CDA is after a Mini Golf in F-7/3.

Seemingly the old vibes are still here, residents of the area opposed to this construction and now CDA has dropped plans of Mini Golf in Islamabad yet again.

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has dropped plans of developing a mini golf course in Sector F-7/3 because the project had turned controversial after residents objected to it. CDA Director (Parks) Malik Abid told Daily Times on Friday that the decision not to go ahead with the course was taken more than one month ago. “We had meetings with the residents and businessmen in the area and they wanted that making only a park there would be more appropriate,” he said.

According to CDA:

The park will be decorated with growing of new fresh green areas, sit outs, walking and jogging tracks and other landscape features.

Wow … I’m already looking forward to it. November’s the plan deadline.

ps: its the park in front of Gelatto Affairs :)

Images courtesy: Dawn

ELECTRONIC SPEED DETECTORS ON 7TH AVENUE ISLAMABAD, originally uploaded by www.first-pakistan.blogspot.com.

Now people would probably slow down at the said spot to see their speeds .. I hope it gives birth to traffic mayhem on highway, Not!

Like dinosaurs, when it comes to Marine life … the only thing that sounds ferociously appealing to me is SHARK. And I definitely never thought that I’ll buy 1 kg of shark for Rs. 195 ;-)

Well not so fast we can now. Metro (yup Metro fever’s now down yet :~)) is letting you do that. last weekend when I went there the fish standing lying tall on the ice was definitely not Shark. When I passed the Marine corner today, wooohooo… Shark … a big big  shark was so aesthetically displayed. I  almost jumped at the sight and a pic of him (or her :D) with the kids was inevitable…. !

So here’s it for ya ….

Meet Mr. Shark and His Kids 

I hope selling Sharks is not violating any rules … shark’s a shark … I dont think its a FARM FISH … any idea if its selling is legally just?

You definitely have read Fatima’s Marine experience a few days earlier. Finally, I ot the chance to visit Metro too … its huge and its interesting.

The bakery is lucratively enticing  … but then meat section is no less.  Its chilly considering the loadsheddings country-wide … seem like a heaven =)

The Goat and Cow anatomical charts a lot  looked amazing … nicely displayed … ideal for Eid ul Adhaa (Azhaa … if you wana read so).  So now you can know whats a Bong and whats Puth.
Clean, hygienic and  wrapped bakray were  a delight to watch =))  see for yourself…!

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Marking the increase in fuel prices, terrorist attacks,  declining state of a common pakistani … the 13th NA is all set to gather at Parliament house today to take their oaths.

The war on PM, hopefully, will catch some light today …  Who will you support for the chair of Prime Minister?

• Makhdoom Amin fahim
• Asif Ali Zardari-Bhutto
• Yusuf Reza 3

More>> All Things Pakistan talks of Uncertainty too.

I was visiting Wateen franchise today in order to get a couple of things for my recently purchased Wateen WiMAX package, when I heard the lady behind the big glass-table asking the customer, “This is the road you are talking about, now tell me which street is your house in?” I was thinking if are they keeping some detailed map of the city or what? She turned the face of her LCD towards the customer to give him a better view of the map or whatever she was talking about. Out of curiosity I got closer to the screen. And she was actually pointing on a satellite image of the city hosted in Google Earth. I was like, woww!!!.

Before this, for me at least, Google Earth was just a cool application used by people to look at different places in the world from upside, at a distance of few kilometers, just for fun. E.g. I remember when it was launched how excited I was on locating a blurred image of my own house and then my school and my university and my workplace and ….
But it was all fun.

And today I just realized that apart from fun, how useful it can be for some serious business as well.

The guys at Wateen actually locate your house on Google Earth, get the coordinates (longitude/latitude), provide these coordinates to their own system, which then maps these coords to the their signal-strength map, and they are able to tell you if the your house is in their operating radius or not, and if it is, what is the strength of signal in that area. Also on receiving some complaint, they get your coords from their db, and check if something is wrong with the signals in your area.

Good use of technology Wateen guys. Keep it up.

P.S. Although my experience with the staff at franchise was not that pleasant as I expected it to be, and also if you call their call center they put you on an unusually long wait before somebody picks your call, but the connection is quite good. So if you are thinking about trying it, you can safely go ahead. I am using it for a month now, and I had no issues with it, AS OF NOW. Who knows about tomorrow :)

This week a French traveller, Ludovic Hubler who is touring around the world by hitchhiking for 5 years arrived in Islamabad. He has traveled around 80 countries, all the American continent, Antarctica, some African countries, part of Asia and the whole Europe. Now after 54 months and 145,000 Kms traveling, he has arrived Pakistan.

His challenge, which started on January 1st 2003 from France, has consisted of completing a tour of the world using hitchhiking (cars, trucks, sailing-boats, cargos, ice-breaker, donkeys, camels, etc…) as his only means of transportation. Hitchhiking around the world is not only his personal challenge but it’s also in his opinion the best way to interact with the local populations.
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WHEN he started his software company, Faizan Buzdar and three friends worked from a spare bedroom in the home of another friend. Their view was inspiring: the lovely house of an entrepreneur who had made a mint from his own start-up. “We would look at it and say we would buy it when we succeeded,” Mr. Buzdar said last week.

Thanks to New York Times for the post summary. And Arsalan Haleem for suggesting the story.

A few weeks back the National Art Gallery opened its doors to the public near the Parliment house. It has managed to attract quite a number of people.After seeing the advertisement in the newspapers and hearing about it from several people I decided to pay visit to the gallery.
It was totally different from what I expected. A you approach the entrance of the vicinity you are greeted by a sentry of seven large black statues of burqa-clad figures, haunting and dementor like. On close inspection it was found that they are made from fibreglass although from a distance they seem to be made from charcoal.
The gallery which took over more than two decades to be materialized now houses 600 works of art featuring 126 artists. Grouped in 16 exhibitions with each hall dedicated to a certain subject.

Photogragh: Aamir Qureshi
There are several internees around the gallery who can explain to the visitors what the painting and the sculptures depict. Although most of the time I did not find them helpful. The room which was dedicated to love was perhaps the most controversial of the exhibitions( or may be the hall at the top floor) where some paintings displayed nudity. This was totally out of the blue for me and many other who would expect strong censorship.
I was totally taken by surprize when I saw a several paintings depicting homosexuallity. I wonder why the mullahs haven’t criticized yet? I was also appalled to see that the paint on the wall was already getting scraped off due to the water getting leaked from the ceiling in room of the miniatures.
Although the general effort in bringing all these pieces of art together at one place is very much appriciated and is a visual treat for the art lovers.
The Art Gallery opens at 11a.m. Theres no ticket from 11a.m to 2p.m and later when it reopens at 3pm there is some sort of ticket.
And do remember that when you go into a hall that has this sound which is quite irritating dont keep wondering what it is. The sound coming from the speakers is the sound of childeren reciting Quran mechanically in congregation. I found this later from a news paper.

Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP