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.

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.

The Search For A House in Karachi Begins

First and foremost we started to search for a place to live and although our aunt offered for us to stay at her sons house, which was next door and empty, we did not want to take the mick. So my cousin took me to a couple of estate agents they had previously used and we got started.

We decided to get a feel of all areas and types of living spaces. We must of seen well over 50 places before we made our decision. Our 2 main options were basically either a flat or a portion of a bungalow. After checking out all the different areas, we had come to the conclusion that we need to stick to the Defence area. Now Defence is where all of the embassies and big time business men are based and is considered one of the safest areas in the city. Although we did check out other areas, but to put it bluntly we just didn’t like them and on top of that my cousins had advised me not to look outside the Defence area.

The estate agents would take us out and show us all the different places available. Now that we had decided to stick to defence this gave us 2 options. All flats in defence are located in commercial areas; a commercial area is basically an area where there are a lot of shops and with shops come people and with people comes noise. Although we saw some OK flats, none of them had running water; all the tenants of that building had to chip in to fill up using a water tanker. I really didn’t like that option, you see I was thinking ahead if I had water tankers and God knows what to worry about, I would barely have time for the business.

This narrowed our options down to bungalow portions. A bungalow portion is basically half of a bungalow and for those of you who have visited the sub continent then you would know that the bungalows and HUGE. After a lot of running around we found our portion and we knew this was it as soon as we walked through the doors, you know you get that feeling sometimes and some things just feel right, well this was one of those times.

Although it was a bit steep, we wanted to be comfortable and it was also only 5 minutes from my cousin’s house so we went ahead with it. Ok just as a word of warning, the way the rent is paid in Pakistan is you generally pay a security deposit worth 2 months rent, which is kept up until the end of your contract, after which the landlord inspects the property and makes sure everything is in order, then the security deposit is returned, which is not a problem and is the usual practice in the UK as well. The bombshell hit when they wanted the whole years rent in advance, you heard it they wanted 12 months rent all in one go and this was the usual practice here.

After a lot of accounting and conferring we went ahead with the deal and finally signed the lease for the place on I think it was the 11^th of February 2007.

For those of you who are familiar with Karachi then I am located 5 minutes from the Saudi Arabian Embassy.