As an inevitable result of the ongoing military operation in the northern parts of our country, hundreds of men, women and children have died an unfair death while thousands had to leave their homes to escape being sandwiched in the militants vs military war.

Recent media reports and personal accounts of individual visitors tell us that many of the families who fled the scene of fighting are now living in refugee camps at Mardan and Nowshera.

This is the time to stand together, again, in helping the victims of the situation. A friend and our fellow LMB author, Mohammad Khan (aka Momekh) has taken initiative to start a relief effort from Lahore focused on collection of tents, medicines, food, ration, bottled water, utensils (plates) and other goods that may be of any use to our brethern in need. Ramadan is approaching and these people need help fast.

In his own words, “Preferred is medicine for diarrhea, hepatitis. Or utensils like plates etc. If not, cash can also be sent. A comprehensive list of required stuff inshALLAH will be ready soon.”

If you are interested in contributing relief goods, volunteering or helping by any means please contact:

Mohammad Khan

62-Bridge Colony, Lahore Cantonment

Mobile: 0300-4003055

Please spread the word to those you think will be interested in helping too.

We need to revive the October 2005 spirit back into action…!

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“I don’t want people to do jobs; I want them to become entrepreneurs” said Badar Khushnood, Country Consultant, Google in his presentation at P@SHA Career Expo, Avari Hotel, Lahore. “Everyone must do any bussiness, whether; big or small and blogging is one of them” he added.

He was addressing a session, yesterday, on how to earn a good living by blogging. Being a Google Guy, his focus was on Google’s products like Blogger, Google Adsense and Google Analaytics but his tips were universal to all types of bloggers.

Badar Khushnood presenting "Earn a good living by blogging"

It was more like a group discussion where many people shared their experiences and asked Badar different questions regarding blogging and Google’s applications.

“For blogging, you need to know your passion. It can be your hobbies, your profession or anything you like” added Badar. He continued,” Making money by blogging is possible but there’s no shortcut. The content must be unique while, regularity and patience are must needed abilities.”

There were two case studies of earning blogs maintained by individuals. One, Sizzled Core by Haris Nadeem and second AMLaw by Tanseer.

“I used to visit forums and used to read tips. Then I thought of having my own website where I could post these tips” said Haris Nadeem, a Matric (SSC) graduate, who is earning about $600 to $700 a month without having any computer background. :-)

The session lasted for about one and half an hour. Different examples were cited and Badar cited Google Webcentral a useful source for bloggers and webmasters.

The whole session was great but I couldn’t cover the rest of the event due to shortage of time. I hope the people who visited the event must have gained a lot.

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Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@sha) is bringing an IT career expo Lahore after arranging such events at Karachi and Rawalpindi successfully this year.

The scheduled event details are as follows:

Date: Sunday, August 24, 2008

Time: 9am to 6pm

Venue: Avari, Lahore

For further information and queries, please visit Jehan Ara’s web-place or the event’s page on Facebook.

Organizers are bringing a bunch lot of Information Technology companies based in and around Lahore including NetSol Technologies, InfoTech, VahZay and internationally renowned firms like Intel and IBM this time.

Following the career expo will be held the volume next of previous year’s super charged Startup Insiders 11; a session to inspire, encourage and support entrepreneurship among passionate individuals with sharp and innovative brains.

So, just be there!! ;)

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So everyone is happy?? (Don’t worry you will get another chance to be happy in couple of years again by our presidents and politicians with same scenario and leg pullings). Mushy with teary eyes just said good bye to us as a president. He had his options that he could have used but he decided to resign.

In my personal opinion fair politics is an old story. Corruption is undermining this institution called government and we are going into deep trouble. We are getting used to sit back and relax before getting into new trouble, its a cycle.

He said in the end “Pakistan ka Khuda Hafiz” and same i say “hamara allah hee hafiz”

Anyways, best of the best things he did was that he made MEDIA so strong. Do you guys have your words about his best and worst deeds??????

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Sites of Station

Originally uploaded by Umer Zafar

in bad bad state, hmmm?

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Another 9 youngsters lost their lives one-wheeling the night of Independence in Lahore and Gujranwala.

We are in dire need of rollercoasters in this country as people are so desperate to go to any lengths for a pill of thrill. One-wheeling, night car racing, phut phut rickshaw racing, drugs, throat slitting wire twine - what next for our youth?? 

Are we turning into psychos as a society or what?

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Mozang Chungi: One of the worst traffic jams I ever witnessed.

Recent torrential rains, especially the heavy rainfall on Tuesday, left the whole city paralyzed. Forecast experts considered it a record rainfall (168mm) in past 12 years. People from all walks of life were badly affected. The attendance remained short in offices and most of the businesses, especially in the lower areas, remained closed or were opened late in the evening. The water entered the houses and in the shops of the people. It was reported that even the Chief Minister’s house was drowned. It may also affect the Independence Day celebrations.

Boys pushing a broken down ambulance.

Many motorcycles and cars broke down in 3.5 to 4 feet rain water.

A section of Ferozpur Road is not able to be used due to rain water. The other lane is jam packed with vehicles.

Luckily, the rain stopped. If it had continued for a little more while, I had to help my family to wipe out the rain water from my own house. It’s still raining today. I wish it does not add to people’s problems.

It did nothing..

WASA Emergency centre: I believe they were helpless.

No other way to cross except going through it.

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I wish every Pakistani a very happy independence day :).

This day brings me lots of delightful childhood memories, when we used to get together, shop around and decorate our house with flags and candles and believe me, hamaisha barish ho jati thee :(. This is happening again, monsoon downpours are right here and affecting most of the country, but still the spirit is there, kyon bhai?? So what activities you guys gonna’ have on this holiday? Just sleeping (zzZZZZZZ….) or decorating and some bhangra stuff at Mall Road?????

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It is the weather of Lahore that gives the city that tangy flavor.
More like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.

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Once again, the entire nation seems to have been hijacked by yet another twist in the political saga involving our very own Sheray Punjab against ‘Bushy’ Mush.

Doesn’t it all seem a bit too familiar - Mush decides to fly to China (presumably to catch up with his buddy from Texas)…Sharif kicks off impeachment proceedings…Mush then pulls a fast one and stays put in Pakistan. What can I say…the whole thing seems so 1999!

Sharif is probably still bitter about Mush spoiling his previous attempt at looting the nation to the core. He is keen to pick up where he left off (besides, the Park Lane/ Raiwind/ Model Town mansions probably needs some much needed attention by now).

Mush on the other hand just doesn’t seem to have the word ‘quit’ in his dictionary. What he really needs now is a good spanking (literally) from Kiyani with his gold plated baton and kicked out of
the presidency…In fact, from Islamabad back to Karachi DHA :)

Jokes aside, I feel sorry for our sonewhat confused President/General/ Dictator. I really believe that in his heart of hearts, he is probably the most sincerest serving leader. There is no denying the fact that his ego has now completely blinded him and he jas become an utter liability. However, Sharif, Zardari and others don’t hold even an aorta of respect in my eyes. In fact, these so called democratic leaders are products of vicious dictators…Zia (in the case of Sharif) and an out dated and
unjust Feudal system (in the case of Bhutto Zardari).

Fair enough, that Mush couldn’t fulfil his promise of fixing the nation. But he sure did try. Whereas, the others’ claim to fame is having a legacy of deceit, mass corruption and self progression (if
in any doubt, have a look at the mind boggling assets that Sharif, Zardari and co. have accumulated and the sad state of their very constituencies).

Let heavens be the judge of every man but personally I’d rather stick with a sincere ‘failed’ leader than a corrupt and bigoted ‘twice failed’ ones.

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Hello friends!

From the face of it you have been observing that we used to be a lot busier in terms of number of posts and visitors as well. The reason being that LMB is in shortage of budding authors and their active contributions.

Hence, here we invite anybody who’s ever been connected to Lahore; born here, lived here, loved it or here ;) and who wants to write for Lahore’s place on the Metblogs Network.

Blogging for LMB is easy as it requires sharing of thoughts, viewes, pictures, videos, rants, practically everything related to our beloved city of Lahore, it’s culture, history, people, places, food, music, politics, again anything and everything related to Lahore.

The only conditions required by us are the prospective author’s commitment of contributing actively at least three times a week or more and being a valuable asset to help expand viewership and audience visits to the site.

If you are well interested in joining our fold, please send me your brief profile, location, any writing or blogging experience, and/or your website/blog that too if it exists to the following email address as early as you can:

hasanmubarak@metblogs.com

Please note that writing for any Metblogs site is totally voluntary work and we are not being paid for it.

See ya soon at what we call the LMB Den! ;)

Regards,

Hasan Mubarak

Captain, Lahore Metblogs

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How’s your monsoon going, lahore? :)

Its great in Islamabad~

Image Courtesy: Day Life

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If Metblogs is a city, hub.metblogs is the playground. We kept hearing from people that one of their favorite parts of Metblogs was meeting and interacting with readers and writers from other parts of the world, as well as getting requests for more ways that readers could be involved besides just posting comments. We thought about this for a while and decided that with a network like this, a giant community area where folks from all over the world could hang out, post photos and videos, talk with each other, form groups, play games, send messages, and do about a million other things was probably a pretty fun idea. The Hub is that.

If you have any tech ideas or suggestions join this group and speak up. See you on hub.metblogs!

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Lahore and the rest of Pakistan gets to watch ‘Kismat Konnection’ in theatres from July 18. This Shahid Kapoor & Vidya Balan starrer is the second major Bollywood flick to release simultaniously in India and Pakistan following Priyanka Chopra & Harman Baweja’s largely unimpressive ‘Love Story 2050′. Both movies are a vivid sign of the boundaries between Bollywood & Lollywood thining as the former makes full intrusion into Pakistan’s film entertainment scene.

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And as if this was not all enough, for the more Westernized lot, Angelina Jolie’s ‘Wanted’ screens on July 25 while ‘Kung Fu Panda’ is already evoking rounds of laughter at the main screens.

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Add to that Javed Sheikh’s long awaited venture ‘Khulay Aasman Ke Neechay’ for which enough pre-release buzz was created so much so that the movie even has a fully dedicated blog.  The movie itself was a decent effort according to the audiences.

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Finally, jewel of the year will be Mehreen Jabbar’s much inspiring ‘Ramchand Pakistani’ as it hits cinemas on August 1, 2008.

So, what are you up to this summer!

Places to watch:

Love Story 2050: Plaza, DHA Cinema, Sozo Gold
Kismat Konnection: Gulistan, DHA Cinema, Sozo World
Khulay Aasman Ke Neechay: Empire, Sozo Gold
Kung Fu Panda: DHA Cinema
Wanted: DHA Cinema
Ramchand Pakistani: Still to be announced

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