Saba Imtiaz: Everyday is a winding road..

So I'm going to be in Rotterdam this week for the Global Communications Crew meeting kicking off tomorrow! I arrived this afternoon..and my thoughts so far:

I saw some of the very famed windmills. and cows. All on the pretty comfy train ride from Amsterdam to Rotterdam.

I've seen pigeons for the first time in 6 months, and sunlight for the first time in 3 days.

I fell asleep off and on during the direct flight from Amman to Amsterdam, despite my insistence that I can barely ever sleep on planes. Guess working all night till literally an hour before I was supposed to leave does that to you.

Rotterdam's multi ethnicity is rather interesting..just on the street itself I've seen people of all faiths and countries, and restaurants touting everything from roti to Turkish fare to shawarmas.

Seeing the supercool Monika has been fantastic! Here's to chance meetings :)

The AI office is very cool! The TMU is here too for their meeting so I ran into Juanita on the street yelling 'SABA!' loudly while I was trying to figure out where 126 Teilingerstraat actually was. Though I didn't get lost as some of my other GCC teammates did (must be all the training-on-getting-lost-and-finding-your-way-out-without-collapsing-into-hysterics from Amman)

I saw a poster for a Himesh Reshammiya concert, touting him as India's number 1 superstar. Seriously..

The absence of hills to climb up and down is good, considering I spent the past 2 days in Amman downtown doing precisely that. In the rain.

The search for actual coffee shops in Rotterdam continues..

More to come.

Labels: travel

Today, I went to a session on branding organized by the great folks who have given us a grant; which was basically for grantees to be educated on branding and how to brand the grant organization when doing specific promotion.

While it was a replica of the first lecture of the Branding course I took at university in my last semester, and of any session delivered on branding at an AIESEC conference for newbies: I realized that I have taken so much of my knowledge for granted, having been part of AIESEC and having a university degree, that so many things seem blatantly obvious. 'Of course the color sea green isn't going to appeal to young people / orange makes one feel warm and caring'..et al were some of the thoughts running through my head during a discussion on a logo's colors. At the same time, the other grantee organization was scribbling down notes, asking questions, discussing different taglines, debating branding principles..

It was surreal. I felt like I was back in a lecture where you just want everyone to grasp concepts at the same rate as you do, or want to debate because you do have a different point of view. And I've realized that I'll never take all of this knowledge for granted again - cos somewhere, someday, I'm going to discover a new path to the learning curve


P.S: I wanted to burst out laughing when the words Brand Equity came up. Those of you who took the course with me know what I mean

Labels: random musings

In a course I took at university in January 2005, we had an assignment to research the Constitution of Pakistan for a description of the rights we have as citizens. I remember when I stood up and rattled them off, there were looks of disbelief all around - because the composition of class made of young people from the middle and upper middle class sections of Karachi, had heard these for the first time.

That was shortly before I joined AIESEC, and realized that the rights I took for granted gave me a chance to make a difference in society by changing the state of apathy that I permanently existed in in Karachi.

Today, as our rights have been abrogated, and the Government will soon be trotting citizens off to be tried in military courts, I look back to that day and at the general state of apathy that despaired me, and to the news headlines from students, lawyers and civil society's protests and wonder, where did the foundations we took for granted dissolve into nothingness? Where do we go from here?

The house of cards that the foundation of the existing regime has been built on is tumbling down.

An excerpt from a book I read recently describes exactly how I feel right now:

As I stood there alone on the hospital grounds, with people rushing around me, I had a strange experience: I felt as if my heart had been torn from my body and had landed with a thump in an empty space, a vast void that I did not know existed. I felt tired and frightened. The fear was not of bullets: they were too immediate. I was scared of some lack, as if the future was receding from me.

- Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

Labels: politics

I don’t remember the last time I spent this much time poring over news websites from home or actually watching TV channels streaming online. Most days, I am proud to be from Pakistan – since that shapes so much of my identity living abroad – but I am embarrassed to have a military dictator as the recognized leader of the country.

While my nonchalant father (nonchalancy comes after having seen this happen four times in his life. I told him about what had happened online since he wasn’t watching TV and well, not like that would have made a difference since all TV channels were off air) reassures me that everything will be fine, I find comfort in the smaller things that have come out of the country being under Martial Law – the judges that have refused to take oath under yet another Provisional Constitutional Order, the lawyers and human right activists that have been taken under house arrest for the conviction of their beliefs and their power to mobilize masses, and of the journalists who continue to work despite having a gag order.

Today, as I saw a news report from my sister (a journalist at Geo TV) while civil society members were being arrested and attacked in the background, my heart gripped with fear. I am incredibly proud of her for being a journalist - at this time in particular - and were my mother to be alive today she'd be ecstatic that she is speaking out at the current state of affairs in the country, but I can't help but wonder how many more frantic phone calls I will need to make to find out where she is after the news clip ends.

Pakistan has started a horrible, horrible chapter in its long and turbulent history - and every passing minute, the senselessness of the situation becomes more incomprehensible.

Today, if I had the chance to exchange my passport for one that didn’t come out of the banana republic that Pakistan is slowly becoming thanks to the whims of a power hungry dictator, I don’t know what I would do. Living in Jordan has made me realize that at least I come from a country that is legally recognized, as opposed to the numerous Palestinians and Iraqis I encounter at various Ministries and Embassies.

Am I worried? Yes.

Do I want to go back home? I don’t know.

Labels: politics