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When Hope Can be Wrong

admin — Sat, 18 May 2019 19:36:08 +0000

Hope is taught as a great thing. Especially, when you are confronted with adversity, you can expect to receive this advice to be hopeful from every corner. Even your own consciousness can tell you to be hopeful or you will drown completely.

But there are certain scenarios where hope can be really bad. I was reading a comment by a young man on a Facebook group. The gentleman has some handsome amount of money. He wants to go to France with that in pursuit of a job. I wonder if he has found a job already, but in all fairness, it appears that he is on a job hunt. He was asking if the amount of money he has is enough to have him settled over there with a job eventually in hand? I was alarmed at his exaggerated optimism. The truth is that he might not get a job at all and he may end up bankrupt as well.

This reminds me of personal experience. I moved to Denmark in 2011 as a green card holder. I traveled there from France. My hope was that I would get a job there and all will be good afterward. I had been a postdoctoral researcher in France though.

So as I reached Copenhagen, I found myself a nice house and I settled in. Every day I was applying for loads of jobs worldwide. I was hunting for jobs on every social medium. From LinkedIn to Denmark’s local job sites, I explored everything. Even then I could not get a job. So much so that I made up my mind to find a cleaning job temporarily. Even that was not available. I went to Copenhagen’s Kommune for a job. I was told that Denmark is going through the worst recession in the history of Denmark and that they don’t have enough jobs. Menial jobs in Denmark could be quite tough and demanding. I remember I have worked with DHL in late night hours on daily wages and I had to empty a whole container full of goods in a few hours on a conveyor belt. Prolonged work of this type can lead you to serious health issues. I know people have complained about their spine getting injured or hurt because of this. They accepted my CV nonetheless. The staff was nice but seemed helpless. Days converted into weeks and weeks into months. Every day I would wake up to the hope that soon I shall hit a nice job. The job never arrived. Eventually, I had to radically change my strategy and started from scratch in Pakistan. Staying in Denmark like this was a serious blow to my financial assets.

Sometimes you just have to give up on being hopeful and begin to be more practical in life. One of the fundamental problems with hope is that it forces you to fantasize good things that don’t exist. The tragedy of hope is that the fantasies may never ever begin to exist at all.

Photo by V31S70

The post When Hope Can be Wrong first appeared on Psyops Prime.

Of Death And Taxes

admin — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 07:20:26 +0000

Human condition in Pakistan is quite grim. There is not a single road that is not stampeded with vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Road accidents happen quite frequently all over the country. Death is also a quite recurring event in Pakistan. It is frequently reported on television channels that a person dies in Pakistan every second.

Although atrocities happen regularly in Pakistan, people still go out on the streets to complete their diurnal chores. Despite all of this normal daily life seems to be quite calm and commonplace at times. The very fact that most people still manage to travel across to their desired destinations safely and come back mostly normally is miraculous in its own right.

There is infrastructure for almost everything in Pakistan. There are all sorts of institutions and amenities of life. The country is quite rich in terms of its natural resources too. However, not everyone has access to most of the basic necessities of life. One of the reasons is that despite the fact that Pakistan is an extremely resourceful country, it is an extremely populous country too.

There are One hundred and eighty million people in Pakistan. And there are all sorts of people among them. We have army personnel, politicians, political wannabes, civilians, bloody civilians and all sorts of bloody civilians. In Pakistan we have people who are good, bad and ugly. And indeed if you are looking for the kind of person you have never ever seen or heard of before, chances are that you would easily find one such person in Pakistan.

Pakistan hosts an extremely stratified society. Our society has many hues and colors. And it is quite easy to tell apart that which stratum of the society a person hails from. There is not much uniformity in our society. And although diversity can be a good thing, a main reason for many dimensions of this despicable diversity is poverty.

Despite its problems Pakistan has been a fairly easy country to live in in the past. Although most people have not had good jobs, houses, monetary benefits, better education and health facilities, the general culture of the country was quite accommodating. However, with a population that is soaring at a rapid pace, and that is expected to increase by another two hundred million by the next couple of decades, what ever is left of our cultural tolerance is also at stake.

What adds to our misery is the imposition of taxes. We have all sorts of taxes in Pakistan too. General sales tax, income tax, wealth tax, property tax, tax for owning numerous vehicles beyond a certain number, tax for buying a telephone sim card, tax for using a public lavatory. The list goes on! According to this Wikipedia article there around seventy different types of taxes in Pakistan.

axes have been in Pakistan since ever. However, people never paid them. The reason why people never paid taxes is also obvious. Most people in Pakistan believe that any amount of tax that they pay would end up in the pockets of our corrupt politicians. And that is why people believe that paying taxes is not only futile, it is also naive. Instead, people devoted to the welfare of humanity choose to pay zakat to trusted organizations and NGOs.

Tax evasion is not going to remain a possibility in Pakistan in the future. In as early as the next ten years, people of Pakistan would be overwhelmed with tax related issues. Government would collect taxes ruthlessly and act quite punitively towards those who evade it. The government would also be quite aware of the tax evaders as well. All of this has already become possible due to the highly evolved electronic profiling systems of people.

Paying taxes is a good thing and many people are privy about its benefits. For instance, the taxation system of Scandinavia is well known to the ordinary folks and it is greatly admired and envied. In Scandinavia people have to pay a lot of taxes. Altogether, taxes could be as much as half of the salary of working person. However, the theme behind such taxation schemes is quite gentle.

Younger people in Scandinavia pay taxes and the senile get pensions. The pensions are quite handsome and the pensioner can afford a comfortable life with that. And when the young get old, their tax is returned to them in the form of a pension to them. This is a beautiful cycle.

Taxes in Pakistan should also be introduced for the greater benefit of the society. Anything that improves the life of an ordinary citizen is good and should be adopted. However, the truth is that in Pakistan new rules and regulations are made and implemented in order to open the mouth of corruption. With the inclusion of taxes this mouth should also be closed.

Photo by The Wandering Angel

The post Of Death And Taxes first appeared on Psyops Prime.

Bonjour

admin — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 12:52:00 +0000

Time passes very quickly. Most of the times we spend our present moment in trying to anticipate or plan about the future or to reconcile with the past and the time does not tend to pass. However, there is a lot of time of our lives that we have left behind when we look towards the hindsight.

A few years a go I had a privilege to work in France for one year. I was based in France telecom’s R&D headquarters in Lannion as a researcher. Lannion is a nice little town in the North West of France in its province of Brittany. Like the rest of France, and most of Europe, Lannion is also extremely beautiful. And not only that the people are mostly also very friendly and extremely nice. The year lived in Lannion was very memorable. We were a few Pakistanis in the town who had befriended numerous French, Romanian and people from other nationalities. Together we had loads of fun. I wanted to write a bit more detailed article about my stay in Lannion, but I would save that for another time. I am writing this article for another purpose and a different experience.

I was lodged very close to France Telecom R&D. I could walk to work from home in around 15-20 minutes. This is not much. In order to walk conveniently and to enjoy the experience, I had found a combination of streets that were rather solitary and that were also full of typical Celtic flora and European houses. As I write this, I deeply yearn from inside to go and live there again. Walking to work and back used to be a healthy process that I really enjoyed. Sometimes it rained and I had to take a bus. But normally I preferred to walk. Walking also allowed me to develop new perspectives about my work, as it allowed me ample time to reflect and think about work.

On a few occasions I passed by a small boy in one of the streets. And this is one of the reasons why I am writing this article. I will talk about the other reason latter below. The boy was around 6–8 years old. He’d be going school. He’d be well-dressed, well combed, neat and tidy, with a schoolbag hanging on his back. Whenever he’d pass by me, while robotically walking to the school, he’d say “Bonjour” to me loudly while his eyes were almost always lowered. The only things I clearly remember about him now are that he had blond hair, he’d be wearing large glasses with a brown frame, and that he had blue eyes.

I cannot forget this experience. And I have always wondered that definitely his mother may have taught him to behave nicely to strangers. Of course, such children can also be at a risk of being abused in some way due to their innocence. But the fact that he was being groomed and nurtured very elegantly should not be overlooked. Irrespective of his family background, and our cultural remoteness, I still think about that boy at times. And I think that he deserves enormous praise. I could never muster the courage to ask him his name and related things. All I’d say in return was Bonjour. I was wary that if I reacted in any way more or less than that, the pigeon will fly away, and I would never be able to see him again.

Let me digress a little bit to another topic for a while. This seemingly does not have any relevance with the context of this article. However, this is the second reason why I wanted to write this post. In as much as the two incidents are disconnected, the truth is that they come to my mind simultaneously. So, let us digress to Innocence of the Muslims for a short while. Recently I read somewhere that google has promised, in front of one of the relevant US courts of Law, to remove the movie from YouTube. This is a commendable effort indeed. This would not only allow Government of Pakistan to remove a ban from YouTube, it would also help in subsiding unnecessary rifts between various cultures and civilizations.

When the movie was first released I had a chance to look at the movie a little bit. This is to say that I had a chance to look at the boy and the girl who starred in the movie. The truth is that I had a strong feeling that the people had been duped into playing those roles. This is quite embarrassing for those children as well.

I have a feeling that movies like these are not made without a purpose. One of the purpose they serve is obviously to uproot people. In this case they were Muslims. And in case of the Muslims, the other reason is to gauge the emotional temperature of the Muslim society. People react badly and they are termed as barbaric and terroristic. Indeed, this is a pity.

However, as I said earlier such movies create unnecessary rifts in the human society. As a general impression such movies are also self harming in a moral sense too. On the other hand we can learn so much good from the example of the boy that I quoted above. Irrespective of whether the boy came from a Christian family, or whether his parents had become atheists after loosing all hope on religion, due to its hyper institutionalization or terrorism, the truth is that they groomed him in a nice way to say hello to strangers. Such people should be remembered.

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Photo by philstephenrichards

The post Bonjour first appeared on Psyops Prime.

A Hospitable Hospital

admin — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 15:46:00 +0000

Last year I was in Copenhagen. On one odd Sunday I had an unprecedented attack of asthma. I left my apartment early in the morning and went out looking for a hospital. Eventually I ended up in Ritz hospital while the asthma was on. I was sent off to the intensive care unit where a nurse immediately applied all the paraphernalia on me that was required to abate the intensity of the attack. For instance, the nurse fixed an oxygen mask on my mouth and checked other things such as the blood pressure, and so on.

After that I was moved to Hvidovre hospital in an ambulance. This hospital is also located in Copenhagen. There I was given a room and a bed to sleep in. Adequate care was also taken about my illness. I lived there for around a couple of days (or nights). The doctors gave me appropriate inhalers and noted down my medical history properly. I was also given nice food. As a matter of fact, I remember, that on one occasion when a food menu was given to me, I inquired whether the meat was halal or not. I was assured that all the meet that was cooked in the hospital was halal keeping in view that the hospital was frequented by Muslims. I found it quite impressive.

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I stayed there for a couple of days and that time was quite relaxing. Similarly, a few months prior to that I also had a chance to spend a couple of nights in the same hospital (i.e. Hvidovre hospital). The reason was that a friend of mine was sick. He also had asthma. We went to the RedCross first. They have an office close the HovedBaneGarden (the central railway station of Copenhagen). The personnel at RedCross are also very friendly and extremely vigilant about the random patients that come to them. They sent us off to Hvidovre Hospital seeing the emergency of the poor plight of my friend.

My friend was admitted immediately in the hospital. I remember that a funny doctor came in to see him. He had a complete look at his condition. He then weaved his hands in the air and told him, “I will not let you die tonight.” To sum it up, he was also taken care of very well. I also stayed in the hospital with my friend. It is also worth mentioning that all of this nice treatment was given both of the times free of charge. This is to say that we were not charged any penny. And I believe that this is important to acknowledge.

Other people in the hospital were also very nice and humane. I am particularly very impressed by the egalitarianism of Europe in general. This was exhibited to a great extent by the staff of Hvidovre hospital and the RedCross. I hope that the vast majority of our country would also adopt this kind of service oriented attitude. I deferred writing about this for a long time. However, I believe that this is quite important to acknowledge such events and gestures in a reasonable manner.

by t_scholz

The post A Hospitable Hospital first appeared on Psyops Prime.

Texsana Rens Og Vask

admin — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 08:55:00 +0000

A close friend of mine, Muhammad Naveed Aslam, has a laundry in Denmark. A few months ago I told him about my rather new interest in writing and Internet marketing. I also told him that I wanted to create a website for him. I was particularly fond of writing good content for his website. After some effort I created a website for his laundry in WordPress. The laundry is called Texsana Rens og Vask. It is located in Taastrup, Denmark. Actually it is just opposite the Taastrup S-tog station. It has a beautiful location and is very nice indeed. We also created a facebook fan page for the laundry as well.

My friend offers a number of services at his laundry that are related to cleaning of clothes. He is also planning on creating a section on Genbrug where he would buy and sell used clothes. That would be really nice indeed.

The really good thing about my friend is that he is extremely generous. The other day an old nice Danish lady came to the laundry. She had to take her clothes. Somehow she did not have enough money with her to pay the dues. She complained that she could not pay since she was on a pension. Naveed gave her a huge concession seeing her condition. She was quite impressed and happy. It was quite nice to see her leaving happily.

Anyhow, it was fun to create and write content for his website. If you like the website, its outlook, its content and also its facebook fan page, please do not forget to click on the like button.

by frankdouwes

The post Texsana Rens Og Vask first appeared on Psyops Prime.

The Postcard

admin — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:41:00 +0000

The post The Postcard first appeared on Psyops Prime.

San Marcos– Venice Italy

admin — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:37:00 +0000

The post San Marcos– Venice Italy first appeared on Psyops Prime.