Accommodating Colleagues

Until now, I haven’t really written much about my work here in Telenor Pakistan. Anyway I work on a project, or more specifically I have worked with planning a project which finally is at the stage of getting started. I think the project seems really exciting, but it will also take so long to complete that the project will still be in its early phases when I leave Telenor Pakistan in late September.

Anyway the process, or to some degree the lack of a process has taught me a lot. Also working with something that is so new to me has forced me to learn a lot about both the technology and Pakistan. And I realize there are a lot of things I would have done differently in the beginning if I then knew what I know today. My colleagues are really the best and the Pakistanis are so accommodating that I feel I am friends with everyone, even the ones I don’t work with. Take for instance the head guard at one of Telenor’s Islamabad offices. Each morning I come to work I have to give the former Pakistani Army paratrooper a big hug before I proceed to the office, and we don’t even speak the same languages.

Tourist Resort No. 1

The most recent Saturday Waseem, a Norwegian Summer Intern at Telenor Pakistan, and I decided to go to Pakistan’s tourists resort number one. Murree is a group of villages a little more than an hour’s drive from Islamabad. It’s located far up the hills, almost at the feet of the Himalayas. It’s proximity to the capital and its position in the picturesque and cool mountains is the main reasons why it’s the country’s most visited resort, especially at summer time.

Telenor advertisements are to be found everywhere along Pakistani roads. This is in Nathia Gali, near Murree.

Considering that the country has some 165 million inhabitants, you could easily imagine that tourist resort as a crowded place. It isn’t. In fact there are very few tourists in Pakistan at all. Waseem and I were allowed to have one of the company’s cars for the day, driver was of course included. The drive was an experience itself, not at least because of driver who certainly knew how to keep us entertained. Not only did he apply a GTA-style of driving, he also told us a couple of good stories from his home areas, he’s Pashto, probably the toughest people around.

Tough Pashtuns

The Pashtuns is a people who traditionally have lived in the North-Western parts of the Pakistan and in parts of Afghanistan. Those of you, who read my previous blog might remember that I got to attend one of my colleague’s wedding in Karachi, in the south of Pakistan. According to our driver, Pashto weddings aren’t as calm as the weddings in Karachi. One of the stories he told Waseem and me was about a Pashtun wedding that he had attended. The AK47 comes with a 30 or 75 bullet magazine. Outside the wedding tent an 11-year old had emptied his 75-bullet Kalashnikov up in the air. Then the driver adds: “And that’s quite funny, because normally an 11 year old would carry much heavier arms than that!”