The Saga Continues

Been following the YouTube situation closely. According to the Federal Minister of IT and Telecom, they made the decision to take it off air on Feb 16 when they found blasphemous content on it. The fear was that in a country where things are already rather volatile, any such proliferation of sensitive material (in context of some Dutch movie) could create a security situation. In some ways, I feel like their heart was at the right place - after all, the case for prohibition is always a complex one.

Unfortunately, let's be honest.. Members of our cabinet aren't quite your average YouTube surfers! So I imagine the discussion went something like this:

Minister 1: 'There's some bad things on this website my son told me about yesterday'
Minister 2: 'Really? What sort of bad stuff? FUN bad stuff??'
(..Loud Laughter..)
Minister 1: 'No man, seriously.. Some bad stuff about the Prophet and all'
Minister 2: 'Dude that's messed up as hell.. What we do?'
Minister 1: 'Well, let's just block it. It's only 1 website. I've heard there are billions on the net. No one will even notice'
Minister 2: 'Sure.. Blocked, it is then! Next on the agenda.. Food Inflation Crisis.. Ohh.. that's a toughie! Wish we could just block that too!'

So block, they did. Unfortunately, the funny thing is that our guys are soo darn good, they ended up blocking it in a manner that the entire world lost access to YouTube for about 2 hours! My My! Google Must be pissed!

Anyway, so the minister, according to the interview last night said that they are the govt of Pakistan and aren't going to contact the owners of some random private website (=Google, Inc.!) to discuss it even if the objectionable material was removed at their request. Their way is to block it! And if the owners of the random private website (=Google, Inc.!!) were concerned, they could talk to us! Haha.

The funny thing is, I don't know what happened since, but YouTube is BACK as of this afternoon, babyyyyy!

So let's hope we've seen the back of that crisis! Thank you all for sharing all those 'anonymous surfing engines'. You can now return to using them for your own illegal purposes! hehe!

And really, what is up with the dirty tricks being pulled on Obama with that picture with the Somali Dress, btw? You have to be pretty low to play people's feelings on races in this manner!

Anyway, in other news, I am rather shattered about AIESEC Pakistan having lost the bid for IPM 2010. It was something extremely dear to many of us and while we expected it, with the political uncertainty making headlines all over the world.. Yet, I know that we're capable of having run a legendary conference and it would have been a great point to meet all those people that were part of creating the AIESEC Pakistan 2010 vision.. and those that are motivated by it to continue to work in this organization every day. I guess it's the knowledge of that capability that counts! But in the end, I am pretty bummed about it, still..

So, all my friends that were planning to visit Pakistan someday with me (read: all my friends), we'll just have to find a new date and venue, people! :)

Keep it good. Cheers.

Grandson!

I just heard an extremely exciting news about the 4th Generation of AIESEC in Pakistan MC.

Jeremy Higgs has been elected MCP for 2008/09!
All my best wishes and support to him.

Lots of emotions and thoughts around this, the organization remains dear to me as always.

Thank you for being first one to notify me! Owe ya one!

'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.

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)

Revival

"A big post due from my end, but will have to wait till I'm back next weekend." - Blogpost dated May 28, 2007

I'm pretty apologetic to everyone that sent me countless number of reminders (Latest one by Amy! *hugs*) but I think the person that's missed the blog most has been me! (Now THAT's an expression that I thought would never emit from me!)

A lot's happened since the last post and to be perfectly honest, I'm not quite sure I will be able to remember and capture everything. Of course, I don't quite want this to be a super-boring post either, so I'm gonna try to be brief. Brief, mind you, I learnt the hard way, isn't one of my strengths!

First things first, what am I up to?
I'm sitting on a desktop PC (yes, it's been a while!) in my parent's room in Lahore (yes, they're now in Lahore) and having spent a day playing monopoly and checking out the new Wii at Saad's place, I'm waiting for a friend's skype call. That's it.

It appears life after an MCP term in AIESEC is exactly how people around me had described it: inactive! For the first couple of weeks after moving out of the Mansion and coming to Lahore, I didn't think I would be able to survive. I felt like every moment I spent reading a random book, 'walling' a random person on facebook, driving around randomly, hanging out with friends for nothing better than a random reason, was a moment that I could have been out there, changing the world! :) Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not smug - but I did feel that in some way, just when I'd gotten quite decent at the job, I was done with it! haha! I guess a lot of people share that feeling!

Speaking of feelings (told you I have a problem with brief!), the last 2 months were marked by a plethora of bittersweet emotions. It really got me as I watched Joanna pack up her room into her lil bagpack, and walked away the very same way she'd come a year ago - this time with a lot more friends. It was at that point that I first got the feeling that I wasn't as cold and deprived of emotion as I'd always been proud of being, and this time around, it was okay! I guess the year fundamentally did change me. (GRR! And I thought I was better than to be transformed in a mere year!) - To your advantage and in the benefit of staying on-track, I'm going to limit the outbreak of teary eyed words to this paragraph!

Important (mostly cool!) stuff happened in this period:

• The New MC!!! These guys were the bomb. They literally got off their plane/train/sports car, and stormed into the office ! Now, I'm fairly enthusiastic but these fellas made me look like a meditating monk with their zeal! (for pictorial evidence, check out my album on facebook)
• Interns and internationals all around - I tell you the year's been worth it!
• I got selected to facilitate at IC 2007 in Turkey! This is HUGE! And it's my 3rd consecutive IC! Tell you that's a big deal when you've only been in AIESEC for 3 years! But I'm reallly looking forward to that experience. Should be kickass to catch up with old friends and work with the awesome team!! Will also get to see the Pak delegation getting it on as full members!
• Catching up in London - The Cadbury Schweppes Assessment Centre was like a reunion and an insane experience. The CS people were awesome! Totally worth it! And alllll that chocolateeee ! My! Also got a chance to watch Pirates III (NOT worth it!) and hang out with Batool at Trafalgar square.
• Getting my Turkish Visa within 5 hours - For a Change!
• Planning vacation with my swiss friend in Jordan! - Will also get to hang a bit with my Pakistani and Ukrainian (Both now claiming to be Jordanians! WallaH!) friends!
• Going through Visa troubles with Jordan - Good ol times! Except this time around, even the embassy people are clueless about it! Turns out not many Pakis travel to their country. But Oks and Saba have been absolute darlings and they're on top of it!
• 90% of my friends leaving :(( to the US/UK for Grad School
• Kirmani Leaving! :(
• Archer Moving out to the floor below :(
• A new cell phone (For those going 'FINALLLLY', I still love my old phone VERY much!)
• FireStarters Handover - My team and I wrapped it up and got discharged - Too many feelings, and it felt right to be moving on. Missed Jo!
• Being in Islamabad on the not-nice day - I'd been told to stay off the messy parts of town since things were getting tense that day, but hey, I DO consider myself a low-level superhero you know!

Of course, other signifant things happened too. Such as Mehran's 13K jacket, and my car giving me trouble, but I'll save that for another day!

And before my momentum fizzles out, I'm going to wrap up. Always better to burn out than to fade away, they say! But for people that have been reading this space over the months, I guess there's going to be a fundamental change in content. There IS going to be a Little LESS AIESEC in there *pat pat*. But hopefully things will not get too boring as I embark upon a really fun summer ahead followed by starting work somewhere in the world with Cadbury Schweppes (Oh, did I not mention - I got selecteD! :) ).

Heading for the future is just another stage of the AIESEC Experience, and I'm sure as hell it's going to be as engaging, hectic and fun as every other!