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.