'Heaps' and Bounds towards the future

I was just going through some previous posts and I realized that I hadn't quite made a current update as yet. Well, to everyone's relief since I am not up to much (pretty evident from the frequent blogging!), this will be quite brief indeed! :)

Having wrapped up with IC and with the vacation in Turkey after, I'm spending a few low profile quiet days with family, in Lahore. It's relaxing on most occasions and the extra sleep and lack of stress is great for the body. In another week, though, I see the mind getting a little annoyed with the inactivity and the body rusty for the same reason, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it!

Next steps will probably be with Cadbury Schweppes, but the exact nature and location pertaining to those remain yet to be decided.

Had an interesting experience today - one that one day every one of my AIESEC friends has/has had to go through - Cleaning out my closet. Well, reorganizing it to be more accurate. The result was a squeaky clean closet and a pile of AIESEC Tshirts - It was more like flipping through pages of a history book, since each has it's unique origin

From the first ever AIESEC Tshirt created in Lahore, designed by my close friend Kirmani and I, to the one made for Pakistan's first IC (in India), and then there's that one from a CC member that IC, the one from my first IPM as MCP elect in the Netherlands, lots of country tshirts exchanged, one from my first national conference as MC, the Swiss Kiss, Sohaib's tshirt from NLC that he gave me for the first recruitment, the Tshirt that was made when AIESEC.net was launched (yes, that's right - the first @.net!), courtesy Dhanur, and so on. Now, they're neatly packed up until I need to give them away at conferences I will attend different roles ahead..

This the part where I try to come up with a wise closing line, but unfortunately don't have one this time! Cheers.

The 'Shame!'ful Professionals

A few minutes ago, I witnessed one of the most remarkably disgusting scenes visible, courtesy the Lawyers community of Pakistan.

The scene played out with thousands of lawyers standing outside the Supreme Court of Pakistan, awaiting a crucial decision that was to be delivered by the institution regarding Musharraf’s eligibility to contest for the Presidential Elections next week. The lawyers were in a state of euphoria as they constantly chanted how the Judiciary was now completely independent and any decision it makes will reflect its autonomy.

The same lawyers are now on television in a state of complete mania as they bellow ‘Shame! Shame!’ to the decision of the courts that dismissed all petitions against Musharraf’s contestability, in view of their interpretation of the constitution. They now scream about how they do not accept the decision and that the courts have succumbed to the wishes of the federal government. In the words of the losing lawyer, addressing his supporters, ‘If you’re a man, than you will join me in protest and creation of havoc here on. I say Shame! to the government and its supporters!’

Shame, indeed Sir. Shame on you!

In the mean time, here’s a stark reminder to the weak and incompetent legislature: The Judiciary’s job is to decide what is lawful and what isn’t. It’s the job of the legislature to make the laws. Perhaps you should stop asking the courts to play a legislative role and hold your own selves accountable towards the taxpayer money that pays you and to the trust vested in you by your constituents.

Mega Part 2

As promised (although I am pretty slow at blogging for someone that claims to be having a lot of free time right now!), second of the trilogy of catching up to my life is here! For those that might still have survived Mega Post 1, I will try and be a little more succinct this time!

Summer07_Vacation: Turkiye

Summer07_Vacation is the name of the folder of my desktop detailing the documentation and plans for, well... the summer vacation this year! :) Fine! I confess I’m a bit of a neat freak, but that’s not what this post’s about.

Now, under that folder there are two other folders, Turkey and Jordan. For some reason every time I mentioned to someone that I was planning a holiday at these two destinations, I was seldom – actually never – asked why Turkey was on the list. The most common remark was ‘Why Jordan?’. So much so that I had an automated response ‘Why Not!’. More rhetorical than interrogative as you might imagine!

Well, turns out there is an answer to Why Not Jordan.. It’s because I can’t!

So goes the story…

As much as I complain and squirm about visa issues, I always get one/ensure the person I am sorting it out for does – whatever it takes. Unfortunately, this time around I couldn’t be doing it myself since the amazing Jordanian embassy in Pakistan doesn’t issue visas – too few Pakis going there. Unfortunately, with the eventual outcome for my permission to enter, I now realize why there are so few of us that ever make it there! That’s all there is to that story.

Of course when you find out that events are shaping up in this manner the day before you’re due to travel, it’s a bit tricky, to say the least! But then no one else is to blame but myself for purchasing a plane ticket that’s stamped with the words, ‘Non-Refundable’ on it!

So, after some mad running around, making phone calls, reservations, cancellations, and with some help from my sweet travel-buddy and her generous offer to change her flights as well, I gear up for a vacation in one of the most surprising countries I have ever been to – Turkey.

I guess this is also a bit of a moment of pride since I’ve now been to some of the most populous cities in the world: Bombay, Delhi, Karachi, Cairo, and now Istanbul. With 17 million people to it’s credit, what’s amazing about Istanbul is not the population, but the stark contrasts that mark it’s existence. The Rich History and The Intense Modernization. The religious and the very liberal. The rich and the poor. Asia and Europe.

So with all of that, I was certainly lucky to get a chance to go to virtually all the things that are worth a visit in Istanbul – some of them, twice! :P Immediately after conference, I got a chance to hang out more with Jo and her team. Also got to get it crackin' with Khamba – him and I made best friends with the last Starbucks on the busiest street in the city. The Istaklal street is really the hub of all activity, including protests. So naturally there’s a lot of security there at all times – Lonely Planet strongly advises that one doesn’t photograph the cops – but I was only told after this one was clicked point blank.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s actually pretty safe and a great place to hang out until late. Fortunately I was living on it, so it was all the more fun. Anyway, back to Khamba, the South Asian in us finally gave it to all the foreign food one night and we went hunting for an Indian/Pakistani restaurant. Oh, and we found one of the only two in the city. Unfortunately for us, he knew his competition was limited so we ended up emptying our pockets for a meal that wasn’t much to speak of though. So, we took a pic, instead! :P

Anyway, after Khamba, Sohaib and Taha left, armed with the sheet full of Turkish translations for a shopping trip (compiled by the ominous Paki men!), I picked up Pascale and the vacation was off to an awesome start! (This is the part where I see all of Istanbul all over again!). Fortunately for me, Pascale had a guidebook. Unfortunately it was in German. Fortunately, she knows German. Unfortunately, I don’t. Fortunately, she knows English too. Fortunately, so do I. Fortunately, the translations became a highlight of the trip! Haha!

As this point, I have the mentioned the two coolest places in the city – the Blue Mosque and the Cisterns! Legend goes that the ruler of the time, after whom the mosque has its real name – Sultanahmet, originally wanted this grand mosque to have pillars of gold. When the architect realized that it was unfeasible to do so, he used the slight similarity between Turkish for the word Gold, and that for the word Six, to make six minarets instead of four golden ones. Sultanahmet was bedazzled. Apparently, Makkah wasn’t so – since the Holy Mosque there had six minarets too. Ultimately Sultanahmet gifted a seventh pillar to Mekkah to make it all right. Cool!

The Cisterns are an underwater palace. Words fail me in describing it’s magnificence. Even today there is a constant flow of incoming water from the ceiling!

We were also lucky to catch the crown jewels being displayed at the great Topkapi palace – My God, that was moving. I haven’t seen anything like this outside of the movies! (Sorry, pictures were not allowed!). Now, I can’t wait to see the one’s that the Queen of England has – especially since a lot of them came from our part of the world!

Having exhausted Istanbul, we headed to Kusadasi, a summer resort in South-West Turkey. But that’s all that was Turkish about it. This patch of gorgeous beaches was ‘discovered’ by British tourists about ninety years ago. Ever since over 1800 luxury cruise ships from Britain set anchor here – Which explained why all menus quoted prices in Turkish Lira and British Pounds! Also kind of sheds some light on why I could see more British faces here than in London!

Speaking of tourists, I was moved by the amount of them a few miles off Kusadasi, at one of the oldest cities in the world – Ephesus.

So an extremely relaxing and energizing week was spent here, eating English meals, and watching football at an Irish pub! Consequently, I learnt the hard way that the logic ‘I am brown.. I can’t get sunburn!t’ isn’t quite so accurate when you’re lying in a beach chair without sunscreen! (The infamous ‘Sunscreen’ video comes to mind!)

Greatest Discoveries of Turkey: Kumpir (the All-great stuffed potato), Apple Tea, and Bakhlava (I love sugar – Ref: My first blogpost)… And the MC of AIESEC Turkey that were real kind to let us use their office as a luggage locker and the MCP, Candost, who was uberly helpful!

In conclusion, I’m totally in love with this country and wouldn’t mind living there at some point in time. Lots to come back for!

Yes, President!

In what appears to have been one of the most nerve-wrecking cricket games I have seen in a very very long time, Pakistan was stopped just short of the finish line. I guess we'll just have to wait another day to beat these guys at the World Cup..

Respect to this man for giving us all hope though - Misbah-ul-Haq

Meanwhile, all the Pakistani media appears to be concerned with is the legality of the Presidential elections. Well, here's a newsflash for you guys - Currently the entire nation is moved not by politics but by sports.

..Maybe one should vote for Imran Khan after all!

Mega Part 1

The last month has been a pretty important one in this transitional phase for me. At the same time, the last month has been extremely eventful, giving me a lot to capture in the space of a few words. So, for some ease of reading, I am separating mega-post into 3 slightly less mega-parts that might be of interest to the diverse audience that make up my friends!

1. My Third - AIESEC International Congress 2007
2. The Gateway to Asia (Or Europe?) - Vacation in Turkey
3. Current Update

I’ve also attached a couple of pictures here and there, but of course for ease of uploading, the rest can be found in my Facebook albums.

My Third: The AIESEC International Congress 2007

How does one meet 700 people from over 100 countries in the span of 10 days, and leave with befriending most of them? For everyone in AIESEC, the answer is no surprise: International Congress!

While few in AIESEC have the pleasure of attending one of these, I’ve been extremely lucky to attend my third consecutive IC this year. That’s a lot to say when you’ve only been in AIESEC for 3 years!

So here goes…

The Journey There…

After getting selected to facilitate at IC (which has to be the coolest job in the world!), I was surprised to have gotten my Turkish visa in a pretty seamless fashion in just over 5 hours. For those that have read my previous posts, you know how big a deal that is! Anyway, so I boarded a plane to Istanbul with the person I feel obliged to refer to as the closest a living human being can be to embodying an Energizer Bunny: Mr Klepo. The fact that our flight was at 4 am did nothing to dampen his spirits (or batteries) – What a way to start off a ‘relaxing’ summer ahead of me! Haha.

Faci Premeeting Begins…

So the first thing that you cannot miss as you walk into the university campus is the dogs. Not just one of two – Hundredsss for them! They’re everywhere! And they bark and they run and they attack you if you have anything edible on you.. And that’s assuming that you’re not THE edible thing in context! :P Over the next two weeks, though, kinda like I got over my allergy with peanuts by consuming large quantities of peanut butter, I think I got over the fear of dogs! Oh well, there’s a positive in everything eh! Now the funny bit is some random striker on the CC decided to get a little bit creative and name dogs after Global Partners! Now if that wasn’t smart enough, this guy used the last living brain cell in his mind to actually proceed to tell the Global Partners present at conference about his great bit of creativity!

Quotable Quote (CC Genius): ‘Hi Mr XYZ (representative of InBev)! You see that grey one… He’s InBev.. ‘cos he likes to Partyyy!’.

My Gawd!

Enough on the dogs, the venue was absolutely gorgeous – the hills, the forests (read: areas of recreation), the photographs of Attaturk everywhere, the grand plenary and the plenary forms after converting a basketball court that had only one exit (great for a fire drill!), the AI office, the cushions in the AI office, the tennis court we converted to a party place every night, the cafeteria, the breakfast, the glass staircases and of course the infamous same-sex dorms!

Ah, the same-sex dorms – parties would be nowhere as wild as they were if it weren’t for them! :)

Anyway, the premeeting was a great time to get to know and hang out with the Chair (fantastic guy!), the AI team (always loved these fellas!), the CC (now was the criterion for selecting the CC based on how fun the guys were and how great the ladies looked? Oh Wow!), the superwoman Jeanne, and the awesome, abso-f’in-lutely awesome bunch of individuals that made up the faci team! What-eh team, I tell ya! (Beware: If you’re hoping for any self-deprecating remarks at this stage, please seize to read on)

Now as great as the team was, the one thing we were lacking is a little bit of creativity to start off with! Case in point: Faci Dance. We tried and we tried (We almost ended up doing my MC dance from last year! :P), and then finally with a lil bit (ok.. a LOT of) criticism from Pedro (aka Peta, Chair) and some energy from Jeanne, (and after fighting about which leg should come in front when your right hand was ahead – man I will NEVER forget that discussion!), the greatest dance of ALL time was created. :)

Quotable Quote: (Peta): ‘Mann, we can’t do this dance people. Sorry. We need to come up with something else, man!... (Faci team goes WTF, mate!).. Mann, if we do this dance no one’s gonna do the AI dance, this is too cool!’.

Too Cool, indeed.

Oh yes the other fun parts of premeeting were working like mad to prepare sessions, and seeing a mock IC before anyone else. Too darn cool!

.. and then the delegates start to come! The CC was absolutely ecstatic as the delegates poured in. All their work was being put to test and they were loving it! Well, most of the time, at least! ;)

Anyway, this was a superb time for me since I finally got to meet up with so many many close old friends I’ve made in AIESEC. I missed AP loads! Also, felt like I had made a bit of a hurried decision walking out of AIESEC this quick, and of course loved seeing this conference from the other side. Most of all though, a key experience for me was to see the Pakistan Delegation! Man, these guys were on fire! It was a lil bit weird to separate myself from the everyday stuff with them (since everything I know from my IC experience is tied to my delegations from the last two years!). But it was also heartwarming to see the country having matured to the place it was. I am sure Joanna would second that! Speaking of which, by far the coolest thing was seeing Jo again! Yay!

The first night of premeeting I was so busy working that I missed one of the coolest parties of the conference. That day I made a promise I would keep, and sometimes keep a little too well – must attend every party!

Ready! Steady! Go!

The conference got off to a remarkable start with the chair wrapping up the proceedings of Opening Plen well in time, helped a little bit by the technical issues. But I am glad I got to be part of what was probably the first AIESEC conference ever to finish it’s opening plen on time! J This was followed by a chilled out Global Village and an opening ceremony where the facis/AI got some serious VIP treatment! S’weet!

Sessions ‘finally’ began and everything ran smooth – Creativity flowed in piles and heaps as potatoes were wrapped in aluminum foil were used to replace balls and the F-Man was born (aka. Feedback-man, faci man, and whatever else your imagination obliges you to think!). Also an experience that I had always dreamed of occurred at this point during the Cadbury Schweppes launch. No, it wasn’t the time I met all there cool managers (although that was fun too!), it was the legendary Goodies Shower! I finally got to carry a box and shower CS goodies onto a vicious plenary!

Quotable Quote (Ren Chang): This is the COOLEST thing ever!!! Yay!

To our pleasant surprise the conference remained on a high note and continued to build momentum, through an inspiring AI Handover, a mad DLD executed to perfection (Well done, CC and Emanuel), super inspiring Alumni Day where everyone felt the nostalgia for times they weren’t alive to see, and hope for times they’d like to live, seeing our first ever Alum, Junaid networking at Alumni Congress, the Global Alumni and Contribution awards, the madness that comes with running an LN day that has over 40 external guests running 30 something workshops simultaneously, an excellent Internal Audit report, followed by an even better hash run with the Internal Auditor!, ...

...getting the good table at Formal Dinner, UBS awards, the Experience Pakistan Brand, not having to go to legislation fairs for a change, high-fiving MCPs that had to attend Global Legislation, witnessing the historic moment that was the MyAIESEC.net educational release (and testing the system for hours before that!), running sessions for an insanely diverse audience and learning loads, and running a Finance session for non-finance people that ends up being attended by 40 MCPs (most of them doing a second MCP term!), writing ‘No!’ with a marker on all of Gabiza’s cigarettes, and so on.

The two experiences that of course stood out were: Parties, and Global Legislation – I will now spend a couple of lines describing each.

Now, the parties were crazy. Really, nothing else quite to describe them. For some, they were crazier than others (for more gossip, you will have to reach me directly! Sorry, this IS a public forum after all!). But anyway, the one experience that will (unfortunately) be eched in my memory for all time to come was the AP party! Now, for anyone that has ever been to one at an ILM requires no further description, but for the benefit of those that don’t know what it is, see, Asia Pacific, the conservative, Eastern culture, the love, the competitiveness, all of that, is portrayed through a cross-dress competition! This time, it was Miss IC 2007. Now, this is usually a huge culture shock to most people (read: Pakistan delegation), so contesting in one is a big damn deal (read: I am still the only Pakistani to have ever done it – IC 2005). But you see, judging one is a completely different ball game (no pun intended!). So yeah, just when you think you’ve seen and done everything in AIESEC, the manhandling (again, no pun!) sure makes you rethink it. Ulp!

Now, Global Legislation. So if you were reading carefully (which goes to great credit to you given how long this post as become!), you will realize that I was fairly happy about not attending legislation. I mean, who is to blame me – the last one I attended, I had no voting rights and it lasted 11 hours. So there I am prepping up for an insane CEE party, and I get someone calling out for me – AI VPF needs a Secretary for Global Legislation.. They think you’re the man. ‘WOAHHHHH!!’ Sure, it’s a great honor and everything, but no way in hell. Eventually, as you might expect, I was talked into it and all the MCPs who I was heartily making fun of at dinnertime before legislation were obviously amused. So there I was, 9 hours of typing every word that was said (while trying to phase out music from the party outside), not having voting OR speaking rights, and.. well.. blah! Sigh… The MCPs were sweet enough to have their own party the next day and I got graciously invited. I did also make a Herculean attempt to facilitate sessions the morning after, but failed miserably.

But then before we knew it, it was all done and just as quickly as they had come, the delegates vanished! L But then CC and AI+Facis got a treat through a tour of the Bosphorous with free drinks the night after and some chilled out partying prevailed, before I began the next phase of my trip, that the next post will tackle: Summer 07 Vacation!

People missed: Tori, Kurt, Nadya
Coolest people met: Peta, Yasmine, Caio, Maryna, Matthias, Milica, Rina and of course Ren Chang!
Best connections remade: Of so many!! All mcps, AI, Gaspar, Tiffany, Reetika, Jeanne, Joanna Lee…
Unexpected cool connections: Emanuel (AI), Isabel (Canada) and Erdi/Evren (CC Twins)

Checking In

In case there are people out there, that are of the firm belief that I have either lost my ability to type (very possible from one of the events of the last weeks, actually), or that Blogger is inaccessible where I am, I just want to drop in a quick 'Hello, Yes, I'm Alive!'.

Am sitting at a grand office that belongs to AIESEC Turkey, freshly back from a vacation at a gorgeous summer resort in the southwest of this magnificent country. The last few weeks have been really intense and simply quite amazing.

Will make a detailed update when I'm back in Pakistan in a couple of days. Yes, there will be pictures. Although, facebook does make it horribly tempting to just upload them on that portal!

Cheers.