You gotta love em...

And by them, I mean the Government of Pakistan! In an effort to be seen to be ‘doing something’ the new Government has come up with a plan to safe energy. Now energy is a major problem here in Pakistan, particularly in the big cities like Karachi. In the last twenty years Karachi has doubled in size from 8 million to 16 million residents, with no increase in the number of power stations. This means that power cuts are a regular part of life in Karachi, with an average of at least one power cut every day. These last from between a few minutes to several hours and at the very least frustrating and in some cases very unpleasant.

So you are asking yourself, what great idea have the government come up with to solve this problem, are they going build more power stations? No! Start a programme to remove all the illegal connections that place an added strain on an already over stretched system? No! No our great and glorious government has decided to introduce, Pakistan Summer Time!! So on June 1st the clocks will go forward by one hour, this is a vain effort to save energy. You see the problem here is not the light, but the heat. The biggest user of electricity in Karachi, has got to be the millions of AC units that are running constantly at this time of the year. Unfortunately, moving the clocks will not help with this as many people run AC all day and all night. It will however, create havoc as it did 5 years ago, as a large number of people can’t tell time and don’t wear a watch!!

I have completed my house move and now happily ensconced in my new house. Most of the little jobs are complete and the cable and internet have been switched on. I will be taking some photos and showing you around in the next couple of days. The most amazing thing about the move was that when Worldcall came to switch on the cable and the internet, on both occasions they were on time!! Now that is a rare occurrence in the U.K. it is almost unheard of here!

Last night I was at the British Deputy High Commission (BDHC) for the St George’s Day Ball. Yes I know St George’s Day is 23rd April, but for some reason we were delayed until last night. The Ball was being held in aid of the Children’s Museum of Peace and Human Rights, which is managed by the husband of one of my colleagues from school. I was also involved in the evening as I was called upon to give the history of St George and propose the toast. It was a very pleasant evening and I finally rolled in just before 1 a.m., the latest I have ever returned home whilst I have been here.

This week has been a busy one as the IGCSE, GCSE and A levels are in full force. Our distance from the UK does make life a little more difficult for us as well, as exams need to be sat at the same time here as they are in the UK, this meant that I was at school until 7.15 p.m. on Thursday evening having reached school at 7a.m.! Now I thought that one of the good things about being a teacher was the ‘short; hours…