26 Jun 2007 (updated 26 Jun 2007 at 20:43 UTC)
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Back to Hel:
So I am back to Hel after spending three weeks in Pakistan.
Here is a short summary of the details:
1st two weeks
The trip to Karachi wasn't a long one and i quite enjoyed it
by watching nice movies and tv-shows during the flight. In
karachi i met my mom and my sisters and stayed with them the
whole time. I also told them about Ansku. They seem to be
slowly accepting it as 'reality' but they don't like the
fact that I would want to spend my life with a western
non-muslim woman. My mother didn't have as
much objections as my sister saima had as she has become a
very big religious bigot for the last few years. This
reminded me of the reactions from Ansku's family but those
reactions were extremely mild compared to the reaction of my
family. Saima was continuously dealing with only and only
one question: would Ansku become a muslim? All that was
quite enough to keep me frustrated but besides that i was
facing the typical problems of karachi: Extreme heat, no
electricity for most of the day, pollution and lack of water
to count a few.
One good thing about the stay at karachi was that I saw the
ATM machine software (a project that i started and worked on
alone during my last year in pk) in action on a real ATM
machine. I was told that there are some 8-9 ATMs already
out, serving people. Note that I am talking about
linux+gtk-based ATMs here, something that is quite unheard
of and this is happening in Pakistan. There are times when i
taste the fruit of pure satisfaction and perhaps these are
the moments that keep one going.
A week in Peshawar
On 15th of June, I flew to Peshawar were I stayed in a nice
Guest House in the middle of the University. Most of my time
was spent with Waheed and other friends but I was also
supposed to have two presentation at the CS department of
Peshawar University and the Kohat University. Here is an
edited version of the email i sent to the mailing-list of
our class-mates which tells the story:
I (and Hansain) informed Dr. Abid and Aqeel 1.5 months
before my arrival at Peshawar about such a possibility and
after a few days i received a welcoming email from Aqeel.
The reason i wanted to inform them so soon was that i knew
that the students might be on vacation by the time i do my
presentation there so they could be notified of the
presentation in time and the interested students could
attend. But Aqeel told me that we can fix a date for it
later when i arrive in pk. I assumed that he must know what
he is doing and deferred to his judgment.
Despite the fact that getting internet access in karachi
wasn't that easy, i managed to send aqeel an email about my
arrival but he didn't reply for 3 days so i asked for his
number which Hasnain provided to me. I called him and asked
him why he doesn't reply to my email and he told me
something i wouldn't normally believe if said by a teacher
of CS: "I haven't checked my email for few days". He also
told me what i feared: "The students are on vacation so it
would only be the faculty members", the way he said it, it
seemed like it will be some 8 people at least.
After i arrived in Peshawar, I got in touch with Aqeel by
trying to call him for 1-2 days. He and Dr. Abid seemed to
be having a lunch together at that time so i got a chance to
talk to Abid directly. He gave me a specific date/time, that
Aqeel also agreed to. So i went to the department at that
date/time and when i arrived at the department, it turned
out that Aqeel and Abid were missing themselves. I called
Aqeel and he told me that he had to go somewhere all of
sudden so he has informed some other new teacher about the
presentation (can't recall his name). I met that guy and it
turned out that he was the only person who was informed
about this presentation, no other faculty member knew about
it at all. The 4 teachers who were there were happy to be in
the presentation but then after a while it seemed like they
were not so interested either so i told one of the teachers
that I should probably just cancel the presentation and she
agreed that that would be a reasonable thing to do under
these circumstances.
I must say that i felt quite embarrassed that i was invited
by both Abid and Aqeel and then they not only were missing
but they didn't care to inform anyone at all. Many students
do visit the department even during the vacation so if Aqeel
had cared to put a small notice on the board only a week (or
even a day) before, interested people (both students and
faculty members) would have attended.
Seems to me that the Department is just becoming another
victim of members of Jamiat (a nick for Jamat-e-Islami) who
spend the whole day trying to benefit their filthy political
aims rather than improving the department itself. I still
remember Abid trying recruit all the members of his party
whenever we needed a teacher from outside the department. I
went for the presentation despite the fact that I personally
extremely hate Jamiat and my friends told me not to go as
the department is now just another center of Jamiat
politics. Now i regret not listening to them."
OTOH, the presentation at the Kohat University went quite
well and all the teachers in there knew me as 'the
video-wall guy'. The topic of the presentation was "OSSO at
Nokia and Internet Tablets". At the end of the presentation,
they had quite some questions, which demonstrated that they
were quite interested.
The trip back
Since I had booked my tickets to Dubai and onward using
different websites, I was to spend 8 hours in Dubai and 6
hours in Amsterdam. Since i don't have a UAE visa, I spent
the whole day in the lounge there, sleeping. At Amsterdam, I
intended to go out and get into the Canal Cruise (which
takes an hour) but thats not what happened. First i got into
some problem with my credit-card and the ATM there. The ATM
told me to contact my bank and when i called the number on
my credit card, there was an automated message telling me
the timing of the help-line. People in here told me later
that the whole country was on holiday because of the
mid-summer. Reminded me of that joke from "The Hitchhicker's
guide to the galaxy" which was something like "Sorry but our
whole planet is temporarily closed, please leave a
message...". Anyway, I got into the train to the center and
since it was supposed to take twenty minutes, i thought a
little nap wont hurt. When i woke-up, it said something
centrum so i got off but i asked some lady before getting
off if this is the city center and she said "yes". Then all
i saw was a small town and there was no sign of any canals
so i asked people where i can find the Canal Cruise. They
used to give me strange looks and just say "Canal, those are
in Amsterdam" and i was like "yeah! so?" and then finally
someone informed me that i have travelled to another town
outside Amsterdam so i go into the train back but when i
reached the city, it was too late. All i did was to look at
the happy people in boats. Well, maybe some other time.
GUPnP
I did some work on the introspection but I just can't test
it because gmediaserver have started to crash on me after i
last updated libupnp and gmediarenderer doesn't provide
valid URLs in it's description document. Any other easily
installable UPnP software i can try it against? Anyway, it
seems to be quite in shape now and it shouldn't take a lot
more time now that i am back into a productive environment. :)