This brings us to July - Finally

Now in July (The start of Karachi's Monsoon season) things were starting to fall in place. I finally had everything ready except for a generator for the office and employees.

My parents had left for Quetta (Hometown near the Afghan Border) to attend my cousins wedding - where i was supposed to be in a few days time as well. Anyhow i put an add out in the Dawn Newspaper for writers, i think it cost me around 2000 rupees for a small text add, thats about 18 quid. I got over a hundred e mails in response to the add. After going through all of them i narrowed it down to around 5 writers. My cousin offered me to have the interviews at his office, as i dod not have a generator yet and if the electricity was to go during the interviews then i would not be able to test their writing skills.

So it was a saturday and 2 out of the 5 people turned up. I explained what i needed of them then took them upstairs where the computers were ready for them to start their tests. The tests took around 45 minutes and i told the writers i would contact them within a week.

After checking over the work, only 1 of the writers was up to scratch. So i went ahead and called him in for a second interview, where i explained the whole process to him. The problem is he wanted to work from home, i told him i was a bit funny about employees working from home, as i had already hired people working from home while in the uk and it didnt really work out as the work was never on time. But seen as only 1 candidate was successful, i decided to give it a shot.

So i got the writer started and he was supposed to email me the work on a daily basis - guess what - he was late on the first day. I decided to go him the benefit of the doubt and let him continue.

I was now cutting it really close with my cousins wedding. So i went ahead and bought my self a train ticket - i had been on a train before in pakistan, so i thought let me try it again - Now from Karachi to Quetta by air would cost around 5000-8000 rupees one-way, which is around 45-75 quid and will take 1 hour and 15 minutes. The train on the other hand cost 1065 rupees, which is around 7 quid and took around 22 hours give or take a couple of hours.

Now for anyone looking to travel by train in pakistan, if your travelling during the summer, then make sure you go for at least the Lower Ac cabin so that you have air conditioning. and be sure to take a pillow and light blanket with you as well as a packed lunch.

Trip Karachi To Quetta

Electrifying Electricity

One of the biggest problems we faced in Pakistan is Electricity. Especially in Karachi, They run a system called Load Shedding. This basically means they divide up whatever electricity supply they have amongst the different sectors of Karachi. So at anytime of the day the electricity can disappear from 30 minutes to 8 hours. Now in the winter we get by, but during the summer it’s just ridiculous.

Temperatures knocking up to 47 degrees Celsius. Without an Air Conditions its impossible. So we were forced to get a generator for the place. We managed to find a second hand Honda generator for the house. Now we were told that if we get a 5 KVA generator that it would allow us to run one air conditioner on the generator when the electricity went AWOL. So my father went and bought a generator that looked like it was manufactured during the Second World War. We still have it, but it can’t really stand the stress of an air conditioner. We use it to run the fridge, water dispenser, lights, fans, and computers when needed.

The worst time they could pick for load shedding was night tie when good folks like myself wanted to sleep. Now the weather was too hot for anyone to sleep without an air conditioner or fan. But even with a fan I found it impossible. The other problem is you have to put a generator outside due to the fumes it produces.

Now there seems to be a big problem with generator theft in Karachi. So I couldn’t leave the generator on during the night and not bring it in. Sometimes they like to play games where the electricity will go for about an hour come back for 5 minutes then disappear again.

So as you can see that even with a generator we were still screwed.

May

There were a couple of things that were still required for the office such as crockery for the kitchen and more importantly a water dispenser. Water dispensers are not normally used in the UK at least at home. A Water Dispenser is one of those machines u stick a water bottle in at the top and it gives you cold and hot water.

This was a must in Karachi’s weather, we needed cold water. As is Pakistan’s nature, things began to get ugly again. I ordered a water dispenser from the same company my cousins always use, and received it soon after. I had learnt that in Pakistan not all is as it seems, so I made sure to inspect the dispenser and make sure all was kushty.

But as was my luck the damn thing was broken, so I got them to take it back and exchange it. An hour later another dispenser was delivered and again I inspected it and got the same result, so once again 1 hour later another was delivered. Now the problem is I could only inspect the machine on the outside while the delivery guys were there. I was not allowed to put the dispenser on straight away, because of the compressor, if the compressor (the thing that cools and boils the water) is moved too much during delivery, which it is, and then you need to let the gas in it settle before you can turn it on.

So I left the dispenser there and on the same day the electricity went off as usual, or was it. Yep, the electricity to my office was cut off by the suppliers. Turns out when the owner handed over the office to me he hadn’t paid the electricity bills for a few months and neither had I thought to check it.

Heres another fine mess you got me into

I went back to my cousin and after a lot of options, this is the one I picked. Basically the plan was to get a wireless connection through my laptop and distribute it to all of the computers in the office. I bought an EDGE card that would go into my laptop from Telenor a mobile phone service provider in Pakistan.

After a lot of running around and a lot of help from my cousin, I was finally able to get the whole thing working, but there followed 2 more problems, the first was the cost and the second was the speed. My whole business relies on an internet connection and cannot do any work without it.

After some more running around and advice, I went back to World Online to see if they can get a connection up there, 3 weeks later I finally had a connection in the Office, now this whole process took me close to 3 months, so I was paying rent for an office which was of no use to me without an internet connection.

This brought me to the Month of May.

The Glass Tower

After more searching we finally found a fully furnished office in The Glass Tower, based near Teen Talwar in Clifton. On the 10^th of March 2007 the lease was signed and I finally had an office.

The only thing the office needed was computers and an internet connection and we were good to go.

The next hurdle I faced was setting up an internet connection in the office. Now its not as easy as it is in the UK, make a phone call and all is kushty and we still complain. I got some advice from my cousins and decided to go ahead with a company called World Online. Although there were 4 phone lines in the office only one was capable of handling an ADSL connection. So I got all the papers together and had to get a paper signed by the landlord to go ahead with the connection. It required a bit of running around and suddenly that one phone call felt like nothing. A few days later I got a reply from World Online, and was told that that specific line was already booked with another ISP (Internet Service Provider).

Ok for those of you confused, this basically means that the phone line was in use by the previous tenants with another ISP by the name of Multinet. Now the way the system works is you have to submit all papers required to the ISP, the ISP then puts in an application to PTCL, Pakistan’s Landline Phone service to get them to convert the line into an ADSL line. So what happened is World Online has submitted the application to PTCL and PTCL have come back and said that this line was already converted by Multinet.

So now I had 2 options, either I get a line clearance form from Multinet, which I tried but they sent me on a cat and mouse chase OR I get a connection with Multinet. So Multinet offered to match World Online’s offer, and I caved in and agreed. It took quite a while to get all the papers together and submitted, then it took a further 3 weeks for the technicians to arrive to the office, once they arrived it took all day to get the line sorted and at the end I was informed that the signal is too weak and its not possible to get a connection here.

So I got angry with Multinet and was told it will take 2 weeks to get a clearance letter for the line, so no messing around I went straight to the top and forced them to give me a letter within 3 days. I visited them twice and finally got the letter.

Now I was stuck. Multinet had informed me that it was impossible to get a connection in this office and the only other option was a cable connection, the problem with that is there are no cable lines running through that area. It was my mistake to take their word for it, and started to consider other options.

The Office and The Fraud

When I first arrived in Karachi I was advised by my uncle to not establish a whole fledged office in the beginning, rather to get a few employees and get them started from my new place. There were 2 problems with this, firstly it is illegal to use any property in the Defence residential area for commercial use, simply put you cannot setup any sort of business at home and secondly a lot of employees would see it as very unprofessional and on top of that the Colonel from downstairs had already warned us about not setting anything up at home.

So I began the search for an office. This like the portion took about a month. Unlike the UK where we take a lot of things for granted, the basics had to be inspected, this includes water, electricity and general maintenance. Soon after I found a small office on a mezzanine floor in a place called Rahat commercial area, which is close to our portion. We settled the amount and were about to sign the papers with the owner, when the owner aka Akhtar Gul told us he had another shop in a place called Tawheed Commercial Area, which was bigger and in a better location. All he wanted was an extra 15 quid per month.

We went to see the place, the biggest mistake we made here was not to bring the estate agent with us, and in fact Akhtar Gul asked the agent to stay at the office and said we will be back in 15 minutes, we trusted the guy, and so we went along with him.

When we got there it all seemed like a good deal. The only problem was with the bathroom; it had no water. Akhtar Gul informed us that he had turned off the water valve upstairs and would get it started immediately. We went back to the office and signed the agreement and handed over 2 months deposit and 3 months advance rent.

We left the keys for the shop with him, so that he could get the water problem and cleaning sorted.

5 days later we contacted him, to check on the work, turns out the guy has gone and installed a water tank in the bathroom and was expecting us to fill up the tank on a regular basis, which would end up costing us more. When we inquired about the water coming from the line, he said that it wasn’t working and tried to make excuses, this severely pissed us off, there was a lot more involved and really got to us.

We decided to withdraw from the deal and after a lot of meetings and arguments, and just to free ourselves form this bloke, we let him keep 2 months rent even though we hadn’t even taken the keys in to our possession. Finally we freed ourselves and approached the same estate agent who found us a portion.