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Working with Promethean boards

So it was an interesting transition to go from a conventional white board to a promethean white board at the training academy the other day. My first reaction was this is to coarse and slow for it to be honored by my presence and my pen, but after twenty minute of usage I was sold. And this was before I started playing with the color palette. I think the reason why I liked them most was the ability to store and export board images and the ease with which I could create new flip charts and navigate between what was on the board and the work that had been done earlier.

 

February 9, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

On the road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai

I spent the last two days on the road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Nasr closed a training engagement with a forward looking bank in Abu Dhabi and off we went to teach a treasury team. For an outsider, Abu Dhabi is a lovely city with tremendous potential. During our last two trips we had stuck to the Corniche and large ring roads to get to our client site and traffic wasn’t that bad. Then last night we took a wrong turn onto the main inner city and after trying for a couple of hours to get to our hotel, had a change of heart. Then this evening after finishing the first day of training we took Zayed road back to Dubai and I used the new Etisalat EVDO GSM modem for work, testing bandwidth all the way from Abu Dhabi Airport to Emirates Hill.

All I can say after spending 8 hours within the last 24 hours on the road is that the reports of Dubai’s death are greatly exaggerated. Even though the city isn’t home, there isn’t a city like this in this region.

February 8, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

Oil Insights – Oil Prices, Peak Oil debate and drivers for those who have never looked at oil before

I am not a trader, nor an analyst. Technically speaking, I have only worked for an Investment Bank once in my life and that too on the margin trading and risk management desk. I am good with numbers and while I have done well with Excel, Lotus 123 and Symphony, I am not the distinguished looking dude on national television you see being asked about his opinion about Oil. I don’t move markets and I am terrible at trading stocks, options, futures and other exotic contracts. Irrespective of the commodity or the market involved the one thing I have been really good at is losing money.

So how did I get stuck with Oil Insights?

About 18 months ago in August 2008, the business I ran and the country I lived in took an enormous hit because Oil started trading in triple figures. My life was much too interesting before Peak Oil for me to have bothered understanding what made Oil move. But once I figured that my continued well being was now directly related to my ability to personally hedge myself against future oil shocks, Oil became an active interest. It took a few months to identify data sources and some of the more obvious dynamics behind oil. Then a year of covering and following oil to figure out that it wasn’t just oil that was moving, pick any commodity and you could model a relationship if you really tried. And with it the interest extended from crude oil to gold, from gold to edible palm oil, from palm oil to grains and cereals and from cereals to coal.

The journey to decipher oil and the markets oil impacts took more than a year. I was lucky and I had a lot of help. This blog is an effort to track that pilgrimage. I hope that the work done here will help more people understand why our world and oil will never be the same again.

Welcome to Oil Insights.

February 7, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Crude Oil Update – June 2009

(Analyst Note: Once again a dated note but with very relevant product, consumption and trends data)

The spot price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil remained in the neighborhood of $70 / bbl through most of June peaking at $72.69 / bbl. World oil consumption compared with the prior year was down an average of 3.0 million bbl / day from Q4′ 2008 through Q2′ 2009. According to the ElA, however, the consumption decline rate for the remainder of 2009 is expected to moderate due to expectation of a gradual global economic recovery. Current EIA forecast reflects higher expected oil consumption in Asia led by China and other emerging-market states, with global oil consumption projected to grow by 0.9 million bbl/d in 2010 in response to expected positive global economic growth.

 

    

 

 

 

 

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) crude oil production is estimated to be 28.6 million bbl / day in the second quarter of 2009, down slightly from first quarter levels, but down 3.1 million bbl / day from the third quarter of 2008. OPEC crude output is expected to remain near current levels through the end of the year, trending upward moderately in 2010 in response to higher demand. Substantial surplus production capacity, located mostly in Saudi Arabia, should help moderate upward price pressure until higher demand begins to erode the global supply cushion. Total non-OPEC supply is expected to rise by 360,000 bbl / day in 2009 and to remain fairly flat in 2010. Over the forecast period, higher output from Brazil, the United States, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan is expected to offset falling production in Mexico, the North Sea, and Russia.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri recently stated that oil prices – at present trading in the neighborhood of $60 / bbl– were below the level the producer group wants. While OPEC indicated its acceptance of lower prices to help the economy recover, at its May meeting the group said oil at around $75 a barrel could be achieved this year and the world was ready to cope. OPEC is expected to decide on the crude production ceiling in September. OPEC has repeatedly said prices of around $75-$80 / bbl are needed to secure investment in new oil supplies for the long term.

US Gasoline prices

The average price for US regular-grade was noted to be $2.64 / gallon at the end of June. According to the EIA, US gasoline prices are expected to stay near current levels but will be strongly influenced by any changes in crude oil prices. EIA expects annual average regular-grade gasoline retail price in 2009 to be $2.36 per gallon. Higher projected crude oil prices next year are expected to boost the average price to $2.69 per gallon in 2010. Annual average diesel fuel retail prices are expected to be $2.46 and $2.79 per gallon in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

 

 

    

February 5, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Karachi city update

Was at work all day and then went from Baloch Colony bridge to Khayaban-e-Bahria to pick up the kids (5pm) and then took Kalapul, Shahrae-Faisal and Karsaz to head home to Gulshan (5:30 pm). Roads are open, traffic is thin, lots of security being deployed and petrol stations are closed.

Two blasts in the city. One at Nursery, one at Jinnah Hospital. The first one was loud enough to be heard at my office on Shaheed Millat.

February 5, 2010  Tags: 5th February 2010, Bomb Blast, City update, Karachi  Posted in: I can't hack it, Karachi, Pakistan  No Comments

Memories, Cookaracha Guides or Venture number two…

Much before Reboot and the Blue Screen of Death, before the Alchemy discussion on our family dinner table and the wild dreamy bet that turned out to be Avicena, before blogging and before DesiBackToDesh, in a land far far away (then marked as Geocities in Jedi lore) there was once a venture named Cookaracha Guides.

Cookaracha Guides was supposed to pay and cover my Columbia MBA tuition, money that I had borrowed from my immediate family. The Guides were going to be the beacon of advice for all wannabe applicants to Ivy Leagues business schools. It would lead candidates on a path that resulted in two years of academic bliss (read: party) followed by six figure packages, forty thousand dollar sign on bonuses and a life laden with luxuries, 2,000 dollar suits, Rolex watches and the absence of any real hard work. And since I had just completed my pilgrimage on the same road, I was as good and likely a guide as any. So in early February, in the year 1999, safely settled in the unreal world cocoon courtesy Columbia Business School, Fawzia and yours truly put together the Cookaracha Guides. Netscape was still hot despite its tragic marriage with AOL in November past and Microsoft was still universally regarded as the undead representative of Darth Vader. I wrote the content, Fawzia did the pages and our Columbia Student account provided the bandwidth. Geocities was a free trial by fire environment where we could put up the page, hook up the advertising and see if the model we had built would actually fly.

By the time we reached April 1999 a number of things happened. The most significant was the fact that I was not the only geek in business school who had come up with this brilliant idea. There were many others and while we managed to hang on to page one of results on Alta Vista for a little while, it was obvious that every day there was a new, better, smarter, sharper contender with similar content. The second was the arrival of Donald Sexton and International Marketing on the scene, the class, the course work and the professor who inspired Avicena, the business plan that grew into a business that became a book. The third was the realization after writing and posting a hundred odd pages that while we could figure out and tweak the content creation process ourselves to really do this properly we needed professional help.

In another month, it was time to grow up and move on. Fawzia, Amin and Ammi took the train to Morgan Town so that Fawzia could recover as well as help the family get ready for Mehnaz’s (Nawal’s daughter) arrival. I dug deep into the Continuous Time Finance text book and made a heroic effort to not fail the course. The summer term started and Ken and I sneaked into Jedidi’s Product Development Course and somewhere in between the excitement and the travel and the trek to school and back the Guides became Concepts.com. Ken sent out his historic email unveiling the newest edition of the Guides to our first focus group on 14^th July 1999 marking the transition. But the old site never died, it carried on living in its own forgotten corner on the web, attracting traffic till the day Yahoo shutdown Geocities in 2009.

In 2005, doing something that I am sure I wasn’t supposed to be doing (ssshhhh…), I stumbled on the old pages of Cookaracha Guides. It wasn’t foresight, just an emotional attachment to our days in New York, of Amin playing with our laptops and Fawzia working on Netscape Navigator Gold; fond remembrance of the idea that fathered Avicena and Reboot that made me pick up the old content and dump it in a out of reach folder on the Alchemy Domain. Even in 2005 the pages and the lines were dated. The internet was “Net”, the style and spellings could use an edit, the theme was basic, the color as Sarwar Bhai put it, was Vomit Brown.

Since I was already looking back, with some help I managed to collect a number of earlier articles that I had written as a student and Faculty at FAST ICS and were published in the Karachi FAST student magazine Online. If the content in 1999 was dated, the articles as early as 1992 were a walk down a completely different world. The only common theme linking the two experiences was the pseudonym.

While this personal project for putting together the correct historical record for what I had really been up to in my prior life was going on, in my other life with Alchemy in April 2005 we sold our first Alchemy Risk Manager license to MCB and Alchemy with a few false starts just took off. The forgotten out of reach folder was left alone to simmer by itself.

This morning at 6 am, just before Taha woke up, before sunrise, before the schedule and the task list caught hold of my day, I was again up to no good deep within the folders of the Alchemy domain, when I rediscovered an old forgotten folder, left to simmer for five odd years. And though the pages are colored Vomit Brown, and the spellings could use a little help, the references and the style at times is childish when looked through the eyes of a forty year old, the words are all mine.

I hope you enjoy this sneak peek into my life twenty years ago as much as I did. Without further ado, I present The Cookaracha Guides.

 

 

 

 

 

February 5, 2010  Tags: Actuary, Columbia Business School, Cookaracha Guides, FAST ICS, MBA, Memories, New York, small business, Startup  Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Personal shit, Writing, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  One Comment

Pakistan Macro Economic Update – January 2010

The figures for July- December 2009 are guardedly encouraging as there are some signs that the economy is on the road to recovery. Trade deficit has narrowed due to a decline in imports (because of reduced oil and commodity prices in this period as well as the slowdown in economic activity) which have outweighed the decline in exports during this time. Net foreign assets have finally started building up again leading to growth in M2 for the first time since June 2009 on account of external factors. In the area of current transfers, worker’s remittances have increased at a healthy pace but this is being over shadowed by the recurrence of a 2 rupee spread between the Interbank and Kerb market. There has also been an increase in inflows from the IMF from loan tranches received in 2009. The capital markets recovered significantly in 2009 on the back of participation from foreign and local investors, however volumes have still stayed away from averages seen in 2006, 2007 and 2008. In December 2009 the KSE 100 index was up 60% from its level in January 2009.

On the down side inflationary pressures continue to exist due to international commodity prices which are once again on the rise, food prices, electricity and gas tariffs and higher domestic financing needs of the government. The government has been reasonably conservative in setting its monetary policy, trying to find an adequate balance between managing the pressure from its liquidity needs and instability in the external market caused by rising commodity prices and the weakening rupee. When inflation dipped in the latter part of the August 2009 and early in the 2^nd quarter of 2010 the SBP cut the policy interest rate overall by only 150 basis points in the first half of FY 2010 to boost investment in the depressed private sector, but the move was significantly lower than expectations. These cuts have generally been viewed as insufficient and investment in the private sector has remained fairly lack lustre which is reflected through both by the very nominal increases in credit to the private sector reported in M2 numbers as well as the low foreign direct investment during this period.

Inflation (Year on Year)

Consumer Price Index

The CPI in Pakistan covers retail prices of 374 items in 35 major cities. It reflects the changes in the cost of living of urban areas. The items are grouped into 10 major commodity groups. The base year is 2000-01. The first graph shows the percentage change in CPI for each commodity group over their December 2008 CPI. The second graph, the pie chart, shows the impact that each commodity group had on the overall change in CPI by accounting for their respective weights in the given basket of products.

 

Wholesale Price Index

The WPI in Pakistan covers wholesale prices of 106 commodities (425 items) in 18 major cities. Commodities covered fall into five major groups namely, food, raw material, fuel, lighting and lubricants, manufacturing and building material. The base year is 2000-01. The first graph shows the percentage change in WPI for each commodity group over their December 2008 WPI. The second graph, the pie chart, shows the impact that each commodity group had on the overall change in WPI by accounting for their respective weights in the given basket of products.

Broad Money M2 Growth

According to M2 report of 2^nd January 2010 money supply has increased by 6.5% since the beginning of FY 2009/10. However in the following week ended 9^th January 2010 the M2 numbers went down by Rs 26 billion rupees to Rs 5.44 trillion. Growth registered over the 12 month period January – December 2009 was 17.18% as compared to 6.62% for 2008. The most significant elements of the 2^nd January update were a reduction in currency in circulation, a reduction in borrowing from SBP and an increase in Net Foreign Assets.

 

Foreign Investment and Remittances

Balance of Trade

Foreign Exchange Reserves

December 2009 US$ 800 million was apportioned to foreign exchange reserves whereas US $ 400 million would be used for budget support and other expenditure.

 

Trade Analysis – Imports

 

All major import groups have registered an increase in December 2009 as compared to the corresponding month of the preceding year, except for the Machinery Group which declined by 13%. Similarly all groups import receipts increased over those in November 2009 with Machinery Group going up 66% from US$263 million to US$ 437 million. Overall imports saw a 20% increase over those of the previous month by value. Petroleum, agriculture & chemicals and the machinery group had the greatest share by value to overall imports.

 

Trends in Imports

 

Trade Analysis – Exports

 

The most significant increase in the exports has been in the petroleum group which grew by over 150% in value as compared to December 2008. Exports receipts of all major groups have increased both on a year on year as well as on a month on month basis. Overall exports increase by 13% on a year on year basis over December 2008 figures. The major share of exports lies with the textile group, which continues to gain share to overall export receipts, followed by food and other manufacture groups respectively.

 

 

Trend in Exports

January 31, 2010  Tags: Inflation, Interest Rates, Macro Update, Monetary Policy announcement, Pakistan  Posted in: Karachi, Liquidity Risk, PASHA, Pakistan, the economy stupid  No Comments

The Caltex, PSO, Shell Challenge…

Good petrol pumps (gas stations for my friends from an earlier life) are hard to find in Karachi. Good petrol pumps that will give you consistent mileage weeks after weeks are even harder.

After painfully experimenting with almost every brand and every locality I have now built my own list of three pumps that I use for topping up my fuel tank. Not surprisingly all three of them are Caltex pumps. After being a loyal shell customer for about 3 years I gave up on Shell when fuel prices sky rocketed in 2008 and it was obvious that there was something really dark going on at most Shell Petrol Pumps. The average difference between Shell and Caltex is 60 kilometers of mileage on a full tank. This after carefully tracking my consumption for the twelve months. At 8 rupees per kilometer that is about 500 rupees for every top up, 2000 rupees in your fuel bill for every month if you drive as many kilometers as I do in a good week.

About a year ago I switched permanently to Caltex. When caught in a bind, I will do PSO, but generally I will stay as far away as possible from a Shell pump. The pumps on my list are the Caltex pump on University Road immediately after NIPA (the one after Civic center is a no no), the Caltex at the do-talwar roundabout, and finally the Caltex just after YMCA and just before NAPA in the city. All three have been giving me 360-370 kilometers on a 40 liter topup over the period of comparison. Some of the pumps on my swine list have only been able to do 290-300 for the same amount of fuel.

January 31, 2010  Tags: Caltex, Fuel, Karachi, Petrol Stations, PSO comparison, Shell  Posted in: Karachi, Pakistan, the economy stupid  One Comment

Talent ,Technology, Management

Ages ago for an upcoming PASHA career expo I did a piece on hiring. A few months earlier I had done a presentation on knowledge workers at Zayed University Campus in Abu Dhabi. Today at the Nutshell forum I used ideas from both pieces to do a different take on talent management within the technology industry. Jehan will upload the video, the power point is here at Slide Share.

January 23, 2010  Tags: Small businesses, startups, Talent Managment, Technology Industry  Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, I can't hack it, Karachi, PASHA, Pakistan, Startup, Startup Insiders, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  2 Comments

Travel log

Travel long enough and you will someday hit an incredibly lucky day or an incredibly interesting one. And every now and then you will get one that is a bit of both.

So yesterday’s trip to Dubai started off interestingly enough! I reached the airport late and while I was fretting if Emirates would let me board, Emirates upgraded me to business class (mark one for luck). Which itself was nice but nicer still when I walked into Atif Bukhari the President of UBL and Mahmood (the CIO at Barclays) at the security check in (mark two for luck) and pitched Atif on Sama’s work which I was carrying on my shoulder.

On the aircraft when I tried to change my SIM to my Etisalat number, I realized that I had left my collection of SIMs at the office back in Karachi. That sort of posed a problem because I had a meeting immediately after landing at Dubai but no way of contacting Nasr and coordinating the meeting point. But no issues, I figured I would just send Nasr an email from the airport and let him know that we could meet outside the Borders at City Center.

While waiting for the luggage to arrive at the now dedicated Gold, Business and First class passenger carousal I hooked into the free wifi at Dubai airport and sent an invitation off to three of my students to feed me dinner on Monday night. All three accepted within a few minutes of the email going out (mark three for luck) but I waited and waited for my one piece to arrive from Karachi. When the baggage tags finally turned from EK 607 to EK 507 it hit me that maybe my piece was doing the rounds on the economy class baggage pick up section. A short walk to carousal 13 and presto, my carry on roller was on my luggage trolley.

Since I am a reasonably smart and sophisticated traveler it took me no time to opt for a 30 dirham payphone card versus the 75 Dirham new Wasal SIM. How many calls was I going to make in the next 36 hours in Dubai and the 45 Dirham saved could certainly be put to much better use. I called Mama to let him know that I had arrived, then called Nasr and then called Aamir. Once again luck intervened and I found out about the dinner plans for the evening in Diera but couldn’t get through to Nasr. I decided that it was possibly better for me to just head to City Center and call Nasr again once I land near his office, courtesy Dubai’s sparklingly brand new Metro. Being the smart and sophisticated traveler I am, I left my hardly used 30 Dirham payphone card in the phone at the airport and headed out to the Metro station.

Once again when we started moving my fogged up brain realized what I had done. First I waited at Borders then went looking for phone cards then decided that the smartest move would be to grab a cab, drop my luggage at Aamir and then call Nasr from his phone. We finally connected and off I went to give the Metro another spin. Which is where the ticket machine ate my 50 dirham note. Note to weary travelers the Metro ticket vending machines only accept 5, 10 & 20 dirham notes, don’t tempt them with anything heaver than that. They will simply eat them up.

As I said it was an interesting day. A late arrival that should have led to me missing my flight but instead I get upgraded, left my SIMS at the office but then I bought a phone card that I also forgot at the airport. Two free dinner invitations as soon as I landed but total confusion on my post airport appointment and the Metro eating my 50 dirham note for a 2.5 dirham fare at 7 pm to really cap my day.

But even interesting days have good endings. When I reported the fact, a supervisor simply walked to the vending machine, logged in, typed in a code and my 50 dirham note was immediately returned. And when Nasr and I finally met at Café Columbus, we finalized our strategy for tomorrow meeting and also locked up two more sales call for Monday afternoon and evening. And we wrapped the day with some unbelievable food at Aamir and Nimita home with Mama, Mami, Sheeru and Akif.

 

January 18, 2010  Tags: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Emirates, Etisalat, Phone, SIM, Travel, UAE  Posted in: Personal shit  No Comments

Taha

I don’t know where he goes when he looks through me. His don’t disturb me, I am thinking look…

If he is sitting with me, I can feel the transition and the change. The momentum shifts, he slows downs and settles, like our Civic adjusting to the fourth gear and cruising at 60 miles an hour on Creek Avenue. I can see the world whizzing by, one milestone, one tree at a time, while Taha wraps himself up in a temporal field; like a lay down with a blanket and a good book. It’s funny it does feels like that – a good book. A memory wrapped up in thin petals of colored paper and cherished for the next few months. Like a clear signal that finally cuts through the noise, he looks at me and says, clearly, making the effort to reach me. Or when after a long run on Sunday morning at the Museum, he decides to sit in my lap or on the floor and reach for the sky with his eyes and for Pandora with his mind.

I don’t know what he sees when he goes where he goes to think and slow down. Maybe one day he will take my hand and show me.

January 18, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  One Comment

Friends, finally…

It’s 8:40 am.

I am standing outside Taha’s class waiting for him to make his grand entrance and he is waiting for Naureen to catch his eye and Naureen looks up. She whispers a few magical words and the entire class of 5 year olds streams out of KG-1B and there are hugs and kisses and Taha flying around. They surround him, wrap him and envelope him in their love and usher him inside like a beloved King.

I love CAS, children that love my child and a class teacher that goes beyond magic to transform the life of a child trusted to her care.

January 14, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

The Zong Recall…

I have gotten in trouble before by professing my weakness for the Zong campaign on this blog before. I think it’s time that I start another round of excitement.

What do you say about the power of a brand recall when my 5 year old hyperactive attention deficit child with selective recall, who speak only a handful of words in Urdu, doesn’t read and has multiple conversations in a minute with himself and everyone else in the room, looks at the Zong Billboard on the Baloch colony flyover, turns to Fawzia and says

“Look Mama, Sub Keh do”

Consider this an endorsement for the Ad agency that put this campaign together and for the marketing geeks at Zong. They may have a crappy product but their advertising strategy is generations ahead of their competitors.

January 14, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

How to change the world in one easy step…

Adnan (Iqbal, not Haider) first pointed me towards Khan Academy about a year ago. I took a quick peek and was suitability impressed. Then this evening Nida sent in a small note with a link to a slice of MIT article describing the work Salman has been doing and then a Google search dug up his Facebook page and recent NPR coverage.

So the next time a student asks me I have no money and I don’t know where to start or how to change the world, I will just send them Sal’s way. Or perhaps even when Yusuf complains from his soap box about the disconnection of my generation from all things real, I will ask him to contribute a few hundred thousand dollars to Mr. Khan.

It’s amazing how consistent efforts translate into such a huge global impact with a humble beginning. See the NPR coverage here and Tonic coverage here.

If you have been looking for inspiration all of your life, you just found it. Thank you Salman Khan. God Bless.

Check out a sample video on how borrowing works to see how simple and elegant Salman’s style of teaching is…

January 10, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  2 Comments

The Larry Ellison Fix in Karachi…

The first car that I ever wanted to drive was a Honda Accord. Don’t ask me why, there is a long convoluted tale behind that desire that goes all the way back to Abdullah Haroon Road, traffic duties as a prefect and my school days. Twelve years later the car I first learnt how to drive on was an Accord. And the roads I practiced my driving skills on, with one of the most learned and skillful instructors on the planet, all led to Route 101 (aka the Pacific Coast Highway). I still cherish my California drivers license.

The first plane that I ever want to fly is the F104-Star Fighter. Look at the lines and the grace on this aircraft. For something that is 45 years old in a space where a decade is as long as a generation, the F-104 has aged really well. One look at this baby and you are all set to party. Imagine the feeling when you are standing within breathing distance of this aircraft. If there was ever a fix for a has been, wannabe, wild pilot, it is the PAF airforce Museum in Karachi, first thing on a Sunday morning. It is as if you are the only invitee to a private party for two at your favourite restaurant serving as your own private dinning room (something along the lines of lunch at the Great Kebab Factor at Arabian Mall in Dubai).

But then its not just the 104 that catch your eye. You see this tank of a bomber, decked out in black, all set for its bombing run and your imagination does a wild weasel.

And if you don’t like the graceful but aged Star Fighter, there is stuff along slightly more modern lines, but of Chinese origin. I have nothing against the Chinese infact I would be the first to enroll my first born in a Mandrin course if I could find a decent instructor.

But that is language, global dynamics and the future. When it comes to aircrafts, for some of us, there is only one design on this planet. Worthy of our drool and aircrafty puppy love.

As in how could you not fall in love. I forget how to breath when I see these lines.

And then I have to remind myself that one day when all my debts are paid off and my responsibilities taken care of, just before retirement, I will go out and buy myself one of these drool worthy machines and take it out for a spin. CAA and PAF clearances permitting ofcourse.

Please note I am not a violent man. I don’t want to bomb, or maim or straff anyone. I would just love to find out what this airframe and the engine inside is capable of doing, all by myself, up in the skies above.

Not on the simulator, but for real.

So if you have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning, head out to the Airforce Museum with your kids. Show them the toys real men would want to play with, when they have the money, the time and the requisite CAA clearances.

January 10, 2010  Tags: Airforce Museum, F104 Star Fighters, Karachi  Posted in: Karachi, Pakistan, Personal shit, Taha  No Comments

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