Education system of Pakistan - Ranking

 Let's measure Pakistan's education spending as percentage of GDP:

 

Since 1971, Education spending rose to the highest value 3% of GDP, in 1987 and 1997. After that it rose to 2.7 in 2016. 

 

The last reported spending is 1.9% of GDP. Out of 156 countries, Pakistan thus ranks 139. This means there are only 17 countries in the World who spend less percentage of their GDP on education than Pakistan, and 138 countries or regions who spend more than Pakistan. 

 

 

So is the sorry state of affairs in a country that vows to "educate the children of its enemies".

 

Visit to Chitral on Oshan Changan X7

پچھلے ہفتے اوشان پر چترال جانے کا اتفاق ہوا۔ گاڑی میں چھ افراد تھے۔ چترال میں گاڑی بہترین چلی۔ بونی تک گئے۔ چترال گول نیشنل پارک میں پہاڑ کی چوٹی پر موجود جنگلات ریسٹ ہائوس تک گئے جو کہ بہت مشکل راستہ تھا۔ دوسرے دن کیلاش وادی گئے۔ اس کے راستے میں گاڑی کئی جگہ پر پھسلی اور نیچے لگی، لہذا یہ راستہ ذاتی گاڑی کیلئے اچھا نہیں ہے۔ سب لوگ کافی خوش تھے گاڑی سے۔ نیویگیشن سسٹم فیل ہو گیا، لہذا موبائل پر ہی راستہ دیکھتے رہے۔ چترال میں خشک سالی چل رہی ہے آجکل

Hajj 2025 (Part-1)

Alhamdulillah I was able to perform Hajj in 2025. The decision was taken in one hour on the last day of application submission deadline. I was traveling with a friend who was going for Hajj and was coordinating with his family about completing the documents. He offered me to join and I accepted in one hour. His family submitted my application as well, at Soneri Bank. I wanted to opt for short hajj (22 days) government package. I had heard from many that the government camps are closer to everything and are well maintained. So I opted for Government scheme. But the short hajj slots were full, so we submitted the application in Long Hajj category (42 days). Later on, it was a long struggle with the Hajj ministry to change it to short hajj. At last it was changed. 

 

Next was the struggle to predict what would be needed and get all of the stuff. The shopping list got bigger and bigger until the bags were completely full.

There was also the tension of learning the hajj completely. Since I registered very late, I missed the first training by the hajj ministry. This training from previous years was available on youtube, but consisted of more than 2 hours, very hard to watch. It should be split into smaller sections with descriptive labels so that we can dare to watch. Anyways, there were numerous other small videos which were very helpful.

Experience at Iqraa Hospital Lahore Pakistan

 Over the weekend we had a 3 day experience at Iqraa Ext Medical Complex Lahore. Before this we always went to Saira Memorial Hospital Model Town Lahore. Iqraa gave a much better experience overall. The staff was more courteous, the charges were low, and Pharmacy is very organised. The nursing staff is very cooperative and the doctors are sympathetic. There was constant cleaning going on in the hospital. Pharmacy staff is very quick and efficient. Reception guys don't have a good attitude. Cafe is less equipped as there is only junk food there.

Now the cons: rooms are small. We tried to find a bigger room, but failed. So the room was full all 3 days. We didn't have many visitors, just caretakers. Secondly, there is issue of parking. During the daytime there is not much issue of parking, but during the evening it is a nightmare, since the consultants come in the evening. Thirdly, there is an issue of workers (female) asking money again and again. They also asked from relatives. When I complained to the administer, he said he cannot do anything about it. The workers would come in mobs and follow you giving "congratulations" and then explicitly asking for money.

A positive point is that Bashir fish restaurant and cakes and bakes bakery is nearby.

Hi tea at Spice Bazaar - a journey full of spices

Today I went for hi tea at Spice Bazaar restaurant next to M.M.Alam road. We were seated outside as requested, next to a three level waterfall and greenery. It was a courtyard in the middle of a U-shaped building with a very neat countryside look. We went to the food area which was empty, so we took time in looking through the dishes and pouring them. When I reached the end and glanced back, the food area was full of people. So I guess we were the first to start.

The food selection was mostly dry. It started with 5-6 salads (but no potato-cream or cabbage-cream salads, my favorites). Behind them were servers for dahi bhalla and go gappey. Next was an unusual thing: pickle vegetables in vinegar, which reminded me of Muslims in Germany. Then the dishes started with fish kebab, honey wings, small chapli kebab, fried fish, one Chinese dish+rice, chicken malai boti,  vegetable and white pasta, somosa+channay (an odd item), pizza and the highlight: Haleem (spelled Daleem). We were greeted on our table with pina colada.

Sweets included gulb jamun, trifle, pastries etc but excluded jelly, really!!!

Except the missing jelly, there was nothing negative and the environment was super peaceful, even for a buffet.

Comparison: both village and ziafat are cheaper and have much more variety. But this food was a little more tasty and the best thing was the outside aura.

Visit to North-East Italy 2016

This year, I planned to check out another item from my to-see list: Venice. I started looking for flights, and found cheap flights from nearby airports. However, as usual, getting to a Ryan Air airport is itself time and cost consuming. Another option that I considered was trains. German trains are fast and efficient, through not as luxurious as Italian ones, etc. I considered the option of taking a night train to Venice and coming back on a day train to see the landscape. Finally I opted for this option, however, failed to get a booking on night couch, and instead got a seat reservation only.

The train journey started at 6 pm. The first train to Munich was a nice train. We had a stopover in Munich for one hour. Due to recent terrorism events in Munich, we didn't wander too far from train station, but managed to find a Pakistani restaurant in a basement. We ordered one chicken qourma, roti and lassi. The chicken qourma was sweet, really. The bill was too much. Then we got on the night train. The train was cozy. We were two friends who bought their tickets at different times, so got different seats. We asked the lady at the counter at the time of buying the 2nd ticket to combine our seats, but she said not possible, even without looking at the booking plan. . . 

Glow24 by Warid

I have been reading about the new Glow24 package from Warid for some time now. at Rs. 15 per day, I considered it to be costy. But recently I analyzed my monthly phone expenditure and deduced that I end up spending Rs. 450 to 1000 in this regard. So it is time to analyze a shift to Glow24 package.

We start with simple math. Rs. 14.99 per day for a month adds up to Rs. 450 per month (incl taxes). You have to pay Re. 1 for your first FnF call, so add Rs. 30 per month to that. I think the tax rate is 42% on mobile card loading. So, if you make at least one call every day, you'll pay Rs. 827 on Glow24 package per month!!

This will give you 100 minutes on your FnF numbers. Calls on non-FnF numbers will cost regular. I don't think I can cross the limit of 100 SMS or 100 MB in one day. So non-FnF calling is the only extra cost I would incur. If that is around Rs. 50 for me, then switching to Glow24 will cost me Rs. 900 per month. That is a very big jump to take for now.

Let me know if I made any mistake in my calculations.

Trip to Andulus

Before my departure from Germany, I decided to visit one last location in mainland Europe - Andulusia Spain. This was planned hurriedly and we looked around for cheap tickets, which we found to be from Ryanair and bought the tickets for Malaga with a 4 day stay. We were supposed to reach at night and strangely the train network of Spain proved very inefficient to take us to either Granada or Cordoba. It was so inefficient and expensive, that we never sat on a train in our whole trip. The cheaper and much more efficient is the network of inter city buses. They even have very big bus stations and ticket machines, which I haven't seen for inter-city buses even in Germany.
We first landed at Malaga airport. Enroute we saw one of the most beautiful landscape about half hour before landing. There were steps of land and beautiful reservoirs of water. We decided to try to visit this place, but couldn't. In Malaga city, we had booked a hotel for one night. The airport shuttle bus dropped us in city center, from where we started walking. There was a fort atop a hill in city center. After that we reached a shopping street and were astonished to see something we hadn't seen in Europe.
To be continued...

Trip to Pakistan

In November I had another trip to Pakistan; first one with my daughter. I travelled with Qatar Air which is known as the only 5-Star airline in Gulf and surrounding regions. The flight was as usual, however, the staff was very good, even at airport. They asked us to hand the stroller (baby-pram) at the gate of the plane. Folding the pram was a long effort since I was doing it for the first time and the staff also struggled with it. My daughter was presented with a stuffed plane model with vibration feature. Older children were given small school bags with coloring stuff. We had to change plane at Doha, Qatar.

The first flight was from Munich to Doha. It took us 4 hours with the fastest train.

Attending a conference in USA

I arrived on Sunday in the US. The flight was a long 9 hour journey from Germany to New York. On arrival, they asked for a special interview because of my last name matching with someone else (Shahrukh Khan? :)  But they were very nice in the interview and afterwards they skipped my customs line. Then the next flight was to Minnesota, where I had an American from California sitting with me. He was a very cheerful guy making jokes with passerbys, who also always smiled and replied jokingly. This was the 2nd difference I noted from Europe. The first was, that here they offer/use much less juices than soda, and use too much ice. The weather is excellent, but the distances which look small on maps are not that small to walk.The hotel is very nice for such a price, with big rooms and a pool+sauna. Another thing I noticed was that all the cups used in the conference, whether for water or for tea/coffee are compostable. Almost everything is recyclable; i don't know whether in the whole of US? The conference organizers were obsessed with shrimps, which they offered in every event.

Applying for US visa in Germany

I got a paper accepted in one of the two biggest robotics conferences. This conference is supposed to be held in the US. So I had to apply for the visa. I asked the conference chair to send me an invitation letter to present my paper there. Then I checked the US embassy website in Germany. The nearest embassies are in Munich and Frankfurt. Frankfurt has a one week waiting list for appointments, whereas Munich has two weeks time. So I chose Frankfurt. Their website lists the requirements. There is a $10 application fee for filling the online application. Then there is €112 visa fee to be submitted to another agency. This agency sends an email confirmation of fee payment within 3 days. Then I got the sponsor letter from my prof. I reserved a time slot on a Monday at 9 am. I went to Frankfurt on Sunday and stayed at a friend's. 

On Monday morning I got up early and went out. I had seen the route plan on the Internet and so we went about to search for the tram station to take the tram. This tram station had two platforms on two different streets for two different line runs. We got to one platform, but found out that the relevant tram doesn't run from here. So we searched for the other platform, and asked a lady about it. She told us the location of this platform but said there is a transport strike today. Great!!! Like the transport strikes in my city weren't annoying enough, that they follow me here as well. Good thing a few buses were running. So we got on a bus. I called the embassy to tell them that I would be late because of the strike, and the guy there said ok in a careless manner, which surprised me. Anyways, the bus took us to a station about one km from embassy and we walked towards the embassy. 

The embassy is a big structure with a lot of space. There was a small queue outside the embassy for the initial counter. There were some sheds with benches along the queues with heaters in them. The heater did feel good as it was a little cold. When I reached the counter, the lady told me that there is a form missing in my documents. She gave me a map of the local area with addresses of local copy shops. The nearest one is an imbiss with a south asian owner. She told me that it is the nearest but most expensive. He had a laptop and color printer. It took me a long while to find the form, fill it and print it. Many people were coming there to do this, so it was a common thing. I also helped a couple of ppl there in finding the info they needed. One family hadn't submitted their fee, so they needed much more to do. Anyways, I got back to the embassy where they checked my documents and let me in, while giving my friend a map of the local cafes to roam around and come back after about 1.5 hours.

Inside, the process was pretty simple. The visa officer was a young guy who asked some simple questions, and then asked whether I can leave my passport with them. I got my passport back within 3 weeks with the visa.

Transport strike in Germany

This Monday was a strike by the transport union drivers in my area. They are being paid on a different tariff than the standard tariff, but want to be shifted on the standard tariff. The strike was announced last week in some newspapers, but still many people didn't knew about it, especially the people not reading German newspapers. I also got to the bus stop next to my home and discovered that the electronic displays showing the next arriving buses was blank and only displaying the text that there is a strike from the drivers and buses are running according to an emergency schedule. I checked the website of the bus company and it said that they are trying to run some buses and that many bus-stops downtown have been occupied by the drivers, so it was not possible to service those bus-stops. We waited for the next bus for some time, but then they told on their website that they cannot serve the route towards my campus, so I decided to walk to office. Good thing that it is just a 10 minute walk downhill. Some of the colleagues decided to work from home. Many people were angry with the strike. Later I saw some pictures on the Internet of the people doing the strike. This was a very peaceful strike. I don't know if their demands were met. Earlier there have been frequent announced strikes from the transport drivers in Stuttgart, which had been going on for months (although the strike was always one day long every time). I just hope that these strike don't occur so frequently here.

Myth of Population of Pakistan

We are often told by our rulers that all of our problems are due to a huge population. And the worse
thing is that many of us believe them, and thus their own corruption goes in the background. In fact it is their corruption that is the main problem. Let's analyze statistically what is our population situation.

Wikipedia: List of countries by population density

Pakistan has 55th largest population density in the world. There are many countries which are richer and yet have more population density. These include  UK (53), Japan (41), Belgium (37), India (33), Israel (34), Netherlands(31), South Korea (23), Taiwan (16), Hong Kong (4), Singapore (3). Even Germany(62), Italy (73) and Switzerland (71) are not too far behind. So it is a myth that we are poor because we have too many people.

Lately, countries with huge populations are becoming stronger. For example, China and India are the new booming economies because of making good use of their population. US also has a big population. Brazil is also getting stronger and opting for a permanent seat in UN SC.

Lastly, advanced economies of Europe are facing an acute shortage of young workers. Because of their decreasing population and better health system, their populations are getting old and they have to import workers. Similarly, China is also going down this path and is about to face this problem. We should use our population effectively before we also face this problem.

International Conference on "Home-grown Terrorism Threat" in Germany

I was forwarded a link to the mentioned conference to be held in my city. It was a pleasant surprise that the conference was taking place here and that the entrance was free. So I booked a place in it and waited for it. Sadly, the conference coincided with Eid-ul-Fitr festival and so I couldn't attend all of the sessions, but those I did attend were very interesting and informative. Conference was in English and attracted speakers from all of Europe, USA and Australia. There were some lectures, debates, panel discussions and workshops.

Travelling business class with Qatar Air

I took membership of the Qatar Air Frequent Flyer program. I flew with Qatar last time. So I had gathered points. This time when I flew to Lahore, I had gathered the required 10,000 points to upgrade half of my return flight to business class (from Lahore to Doha), although this cost an extra 25 Euros. Well, the upgrade was worth it. First up, I was spared the check-in queues at Lahore airport and was checked-in at business counter. Then I was given a voucher, with which I discovered that there is a VIP Lounge at Lahore airport with free snacks, drinks and tea. There were PCs with Internet and a large TV. They informed the guests when their boarding started. I was also boarded prior to the queue. The seat in the plane was very large and had a multi-function remote control which provided a massage and could be fully to a bed. The meal was served in clay crockery and there was a large variety of drinks. The personal TV screen was also big. The blankets were thicker and they also provided eye-cover etc. There were disposable tooth-brushes and tooth-pastes in the washroom, though the wash-room size was same as Economy :)

Towards the end of flight, the head-hostess went to all the guests individually and asked about the journey. Then the pilot went to each passenger and chatted about their destination and invited to travel with them again. To me he informed of the Berlin Film Festival. From Doha to Munich, I traveled in the usual Economy class. However, only this time, the Economy cabin seemed too small and the meal too less presentable :)

I then realized, how just a few hours of travel in a different class made me very uncomfortable in the regular class people; what kind of mind-set would it be producing in the people who regularly enjoy that upper-class facilities, and some of them claim to represent us.

First snowfall of Winter in Germany - too much snow

Last Thursday, it started snowing for the first time in this winter. Overnight there fell a lot of snow. On Friday morning, everything was covered in snow. The city's snow cleaning services were working and clearing snow from roads and footpaths.

But Friday afternoon, it started to snow again. Till the evening it got very bad, so that the city had to restrict its bus system. All buses going on hills were stopped. My city lies on hills, that means many destinations were not reachable through public transport. My university has many campuses around the city. The campus where I work is on a hill. So no bus was coming to my campus as well. A colleague was nice enough to give me a ride home in his car, otherwise I would have to walk down the hill and up another hill to my home.

It has been snowing almost everyday since then and the little snow that melts during the day is replaced by new snow overnight.

Won a robotic competition in Germany

On 2nd October, one day before the national day of Germany when East and West Germany got united, we participated in a robotics competition for which we were preparing since last year. The competition was organized by a renowned German company building laser sensors and other stuff, called SICK. The competition is thus called SICK Robot Day. It comprised of a circular area with numbers drawn on big posters and hanged along the boundary of the arena. Within the arena, multiple obstacles are placed at different places on the ground. Each robot has to recognize the numbers and drive to them in sequence while avoiding the obstacles.

There were 12 German and 4 European teams. Our robot (called "Attempto") completed the whole task in 3 minutes. Our robot hit some obstacles, so including the penalties, our task time was 3:18 minutes. Each robot was given a time of 10 minutes to complete the task. The robot at second position completed the task in over 6 minutes. No other robot was able to correctly complete the task. One other robot completed the task, but it misjudged one of the numbers. Here is the video of the successful run of our robot:

Slow Tsunami - worst floods in Pakistan

These are the most destructive floods in Pakistan's history. After the flood, the real destruction starts, as the crops are destroyed, livestock killed, roads and bridges dismantled, houses unusable, and worse, diseases spreading from standing water.

United Nations is repeating calls for aid. Please help.

Google Blogaward for my Blog

Since a couple of days I was receiving comments on my blog congratulating me for winning the Pakistani blog award. I checked the section of the Google+CIO award website containing my blog, but there was no announcement there, and my blog still had less votes than some others. So I thought of these comments as spam.

But today I received congrats on an email forum of old students of FAST-NUCES, which made me very curious. I went to the home page of the award website and there I found the announcement. It was a pleasant surprise for me since I entered my blog very late in the competition and thus it had received less votes.
http://blogawards.pk/

It was a beautiful 5-hour event and I missed it :(

Country Manager of Intel Pakistan (Ashar Zaidi) was the judge of my category, and hear his flattering comments about it:



They even made an animation about my Blog Award on youtube :)




More details of the event:
http://ciopakistan.com/2010/05/1st-annual-pakistan-blog-awards-new-media-unconference-2010/ 
 

Solution of Pakistan's administrative problems?

Recently, there has been much talk in media of increasing the number of provinces of Pakistan to solve the many administrative problems. Both politicians and TV anchors have repeated this plea. Now that the constitutional reforms have been agreed upon, maybe the Government should focus on this issue. It is often said that the provinces of Pakistan are too big to manage, either population-wise or area-wise. This has resulted in the focus of govt resources on provincial capitals and around. Creating new provinces will also solve the problem of separatists and smaller provinces complaining about bigger provinces. No province will then become the center of power. All the developed countries of the world and neighbours of Pakistan have many more provinces or states than us.

So how should new provinces be created? There could be many ways and the parliament would know the best. But here are two scenarios that come to my mind:

Scenario 1: Divide each of the provinces into two parts. Since Punjab is the biggest, it may be divided into three parts to get a balance with other provinces. Then we would have 9 provinces: Quetta, Kalat; Hyderabad, Sukkur; Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan; Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan Divisions.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/modern/pakadmin/pakadmin.html


Scenario 2: Another scenario presented in the media is to convert all the previous divisions into provinces. This scenario has two potential subscenarios: First is the divisions before 1990s. Then we would have 20 provinces:
Quetta, Kalat, Sibi, Makran,
Hyderabad, Sukkur, Karachi,
Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Hazara, Kohat, Malakand,
Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Gujranwala, Dera Gazi Khan, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Bahawalpur.

The second subscenario is the divisions that existed till 2000. These were 26 in number, thus creating 26 provinces:

Quetta, Kalat, Sibi, Makran, Naseerabad, Zhob;
Hyderabad, Sukkur, Karachi, Larkana, Mirpur Khas;
Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Hazara, Kohat, Malakand,
Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Gujranwala, Dera Gazi Khan, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Bahawalpur.

Many people complain that only 5 cities are being heavily developed, and most provincial funds are spent on the provincial capitals. Creating 26 provinces would give an immediate benefit that instead of 5 cities, we would have at least 27 cities which would be developing fast.