I wish Karachi had an IKEA

About 99% of the places on rent that we saw in Karachi were all unfurnished and that was generally the idea here. So first and foremost we got a lot of help from my aunt, who gave us curtains, cutlery, pillows, rugs etc.

Here I would like to introduce our landlord. He is a retired colonel from the Pakistan army and has fought in 2 out of the 3 wars Pakistan had with India. A very nice and decent man. He lived with his wife and son when we moved in, he has another son who is married and has his own place and 2 daughters who are both married, one lives in Karachi and the other in Dubai. As his youngest son was getting married and they didn’t have the space, he offered us a double bed with 2 side tables and a small round table with chairs and we happily accepted.

The most costly things that we had to purchase were a fridge, Air conditioner (due to the heat), dining table, and a generator. “A generator” you may ask, in Pakistan the electricity has a tendency of disappearing for hours. Karachi has the biggest problem with a rapidly increasing population and heat. Due to the heat getting worse every summer more and more people are opting for Air Conditioners, even though the electricity bill for it amounts to about 60 quid a month, a lot of people working in Pakistan have a basic salary of 50 quid a month but the heat can get unbearable. Hence an increase load on the power station, hence the concept of Load Shedding. Load Shedding basically involves shutting down electricity in different areas at different times to even out the load on the power station. Hence the need for a generator to keep us going when the power station gives up on us.

2 weeks after we signed the lease, we moved in. Around the same time we hired a worker for the house who would take care of all the cooking and cleaning of the house except the bathrooms, for which we have a lady who comes and cleans the bathrooms on a daily basis.

Although it may all seem very easy, in reality it was a pain. My aunt had given us their Suzuki van to use to get around also famously known as the Suzuki dubba in Pakistan. Items were delivered and were not working, items were fitted and were leaking, and the list goes on and on. Then its not like London where u call up the company and they instantly deliver a new one, rather you have to call them at least 10 times to get any sort of response or they just leave the phone off the hook. Soon I started to realise why such a large percentage of the population were suffering from High Blood Pressure.

After a couple of weeks we realised that this was the norm of the country, so we got used to it and I started looking for an office.