A nation respecting its teachers

During childhood I often heard the story of a policeman who stopped the traffic to let a professor cross the street. Today I saw it in Germany. I was sitting in a bus coming back from the university, when a couple of professors got out of the car parking talking to each other. They were about to cross the road but then saw the bus and stepped back. The bus-driver stopped the bus and asked them to cross the road, even though it was no zebra-crossing. Normal cars may stop for pedestrians without a zebra-crossing, but buses never stop. This was the first time I saw this.

Travelling to Pakistan on Saudi Air through Riyadh

This time around, I wanted to travel to Pakistan with Emirates Air, since my wife expected to fly back with me and i was thinking of touring Dubai. But this year, the ticket prices were too high as compared to last time. All airlines were offering above 700 euros prices. At last Saudi Air came to the rescue and offered a ticket in 550 euros. This was probably their debut flight. They too had a very busy schedule and I could barely get a seat in it for my required dates. The agent promised a seat for me, however, it required me to stay on Riyadh airport for 7 hours without hotel. I had to accept. But a few days before flight, the agent indicated that there are no seats from Riyadh to Lahore and I have to go to Islamabad. This required only a 1.5 hours stay in Riyadh. I had to accept it.

On my flight day, a friend was driving to Frankfurt airport and he offered to take me along. I took the offer although I would have to spend a few extra hours at the airport but would avoid the hassle of train change etc. I asked the airport staff if there is an internet connection on the airport, but it was too expensive. Then I asked for a power plug to charge my laptop and they prompted me to use the plug they use for charging their airport transport vehicles. So there I laid down on a long rest seat watching the Matrix. It didn't seem like a good idea for me to watch a movie with heavy gun fights on such a location, but never mind. When I passed through the security check point, I was overconfident. The security door didn't like that and protested. So they ran their handy scanner over my body and it too kept the view of its bigger cousin. I took everything out of my pockets, but it kept on buzzing near my feet and on my legs. So the guy asked me to came aside and take off my shoes. Then he felt my whole socks and I admired his courage (or strong smell nerves) :) I had put some money in polythene and put in my socks, but he ignored it and let me go. During boarding, my hand carry was over-weight (on the confidence of their membership, whose card arrived only after my departure), so the lady said that I'll get in trouble at the boarding gate. So, i waited to go last in the gate and avoided her while boarding.

The plane from Frankfurt to Riyadh was a Boeing 777 with personalized on-seat entertainment system. And the plane from Riyadh to Islamabad was a Boeing 747 also with the entertainment system, but this one was not friends with the remote control and was working for hearing-disabled people :) They distributed menu choice lists on both flights. Food was German-style in first flight and Pakistani style in second flight. Riyadh airport is beautiful but is under development as a new World's second largest airport. They have a beautiful fountain in the middle. The 747 to Islamabad was jam-packed. From there I took a Daewoo inter-city Bus to Lahore.

Married!!!

I know I should have mentioned this a long time ago, but I would again blame laziness for this :) I wrote about my trip to Pakistan last September. btw, I got married in that trip :)

It is the beginning a whole new aspect of life. Although I only got "Nikkah-ed", still I feel somewhat different. Or at least I try to... When I returned to Germany, I attended a party where I had a chat with an Indian guy. During the chat I asked him if he was married. Upon his denial and back question, I also replied in negative. A few seconds later, I realized my mistake and uttered "yes, yes, yes, I am married". So, I have to feel that I am married. Marriage itself involved many processes. Deciding whom to invite and whom to postpone till walima. Then going to almost every home in Lahore to distribute the invitation cards. I had to sit formally with my wife for some hours on stage and it was difficult to find time to talk to her. Then came her sisters and cousins for the milk-drinking ritual, where they gave me and my wife some milk to drink and then demanded payment for that milk. A hefty 50k amount. We struck a deal of a much less amount. Services Club proved to be a good spacious hall for such a function attracting about a couple of hundred guests.

Notebook replacement from Dell

I finally got my notebook replaced by dell. I bought this Dell notebook three years ago and it was having problems every often. In these 3 years, Dell replaced my hard-disk, DVD drive, processor fan and heat-sink, LCD screen and charging adapter. Now they wanted to replace my motherboard because of the problem. I refused to let it happen and asked them to give me a permanent solution to this time-waisting routine every six months. I asked them to either replace my notebook with another model, or to "tell me their office address so I could shift my home near them so that they can come everyday to my house to repair my notebook" :) This suggestion had the desired effect and they resorted to replacing my notebook. I did many upgrades to the free notebook they offered me and hence I got 2 GB ram, 160 gb hard-disk, bluetooth, integrated camera and metallic blue cover in 250 euros extra. The new notebook i got is an AMD Turion X2 TL-58 (Insprion 1521) with 15.4 inch wide-screen display and 3 years service warranty. I have formatted and packed my old notebook and waiting for the delivery service to pick it up. Dell Inspiron 1521

First snow in Kaiserslautern

It snowed here today. Actually it snowed a little yesterday but the snow couldn't accumulate on ground. Today when we woke up in the morning and the ground was pretty much covered in snow. This was the first snow of this winter. Normally, in our area it snows for 2-3 months. But last year was an exception as it didn't really snow last year. There were snowfalls a couple of time but the snow was soon gone. So practically, there was no snow last year. This time, we have yet to see whether it really snows or not. We usually get one snowfall at the end of November and then the regular snowfall follows in the end of December or start of January. However, this time it snowed a little earlier than usual. Well, strange things are happening with the weather every year.

New life in Lahore Rapid Mass Transit (LRMT) Rail Project

The chief minister of Punjab Ch. Parvez Ilahi announced on 26-sep-07 that the Lahore subway train project will be started after Eid (14 oct). Many train lines are proposed to be built. The first line is the Green line covering 27km area from Shahdara to Hamza Chowk. This line will take 3.5 years to build and cost around 3 billion dollars. The original plan estimated the completion date in 2012 but the authorities want it to be built till 2011 before the World Cup.

You can find a lot of information about the project on the website: http://www.pakistaniat.com and in a forum thread at: http://www.skyscrapercity.com

Flying with Mahan Air through Tehran

Last month I travelled on Mahan Air through Tehran. Mahan Air is a private airline of Iran having 24 planes and flying to 27 destinations. I was very cautious about it based on rumours but had no other option. It didn't fly from Frankfurt, but from Duesseldorf instead. They gave a train ticket so I took the journey of 4 hours to reach that city. Duesseldorf Airport is also a nice airport with landing/take-off viewing platforms. The train station is on one end of the runway and hence a hanging sky-train takes visitors between the terminals, the parking and the train stations. The plane from Germany to Iran was surprisingly smaller than the one from Iran to Lahore. They had far more newspapers than Gulf and Emirates Air. They also offered passengers coffee-toffees once on board. The flight was smooth and we were offered standard drinks and food. They presented kids models of aircrafts. We landed on the new airport of Tehran, the Imam Khomeini International Airport.

Before landing into Tehran for a plane-change, the pilot requested the women to dress properly according to Islam as required by law, even at the airport. They then presented all of the women pink long-shirts and white head-scarfs. It was fun to see European women wearing these nice modest clothes on the airport. Exiting the plane, they gave everyone a small box of pistachios. Once in the airport they gave us our next boarding cards and also coupons for a free burger/cake and a free drink. This was uniquely generous considering we had a stay of only two hours. Then we went to buy sweets from there. The first sweet-box I saw costed some 50,000 Rials. Their currency is extremely devalued and a Euro is equivalent to about 12,500 Rials. They had made very beautiful shapes filled with dry-fruit. The flight to Lahore was even more peaceful so that I slept and missed the meals. They always presented their own carbonated drinks similar to Coke, Sprite and Fanta. All food items were also made in Iran. The return flight was also ok except there was a delay at Tehran airport of about two hours which is normal with cheap airlines. Thank ALlah that I caught the last train to my city in time.