Oh my GOSH, you're PREGNANT!

Ok, so I'm at work, sitting at my little cubicle, doing what I normally do (surfing the net and reading the news), when a colleague from the ground floor comes up and greets me. We get to chatting, and he mentions that another colleague -Lets call her Mrs. XYZ- starts her maternity leave from tomorrow.

So I ask a couple innocent questions you would THINK a normal person would ask, such as, 'How long will she be gone for?'. My colleague answers, 'Oh, maybe a month or two'. I say, 'Cool, how far along is she?', to which he responds with a confused look. I clarify myself a bit more, and I ask him how many months she is. He thinks I'm asking about her maternity leave months again. I tell him, 'No, I mean how many months pregnant is she?'. His look of confusion turns to that of disbelief, 'Errrr, I don't know, how should I know?'. I leave that question alone.

Next, I ask, 'Is it a boy or a girl?'. This question is followed by silence. Then a workmate from the adjacent cubicle pipes up with 'Yaar, what kind of question is that?'. I tell him it's a straightforward legitimate question. He tells me that it is inappropriate and who knows if it is a boy or girl, because you cannot ask the soon-to-be-mother. This time my face contorts to that of sheer disbelief and I am almost burning with fury at this point. I ask both these idiots how they find my questions as inappropriate. If the parents do not want to know the gender of the child till he/she is born, then that's okay, but that doesn't mean you cannot ask them if they know the gender yet. They will tell you if they know or don't know, but do you think they'll get mad or something? Do they think that if it's a boy and they tell you, that it's manhood will suddenly invert and he will become a she?

What the hell is so inappropriate about asking the mother how many months pregnant she is? The only explanation I can come up for it is that then people will know how many months ago they consummated their relationship and then they will be ashamed. If that's the case, then WHAT THE %$#@!?!! So, if you don't tell people how many months pregnant you are, then no one will know you had sex, eh, and the baby just magically popped outta you because that's what happens when you're married?

And what the hell is so wrong about asking the gender of the child? What is wrong with this stupid country? You idiots still live in the stone age or what? I mean, I could understand people in villages acting this way, and I would be totally fine with it, because those people are closely linked with their cultural ties and they have been living like that for a long time. However, for someone living and working in the capital, in an international organization, to act this way is ludicrous.

I could not believe such simple issues were considered taboo. I wanted to knock both of them out. Ignorant bloody twits! No wonder we get stomped on by the rest of the world. No wonder we are considered and treated like savages. Today's incident was a real wake up call for me to our current reality. I am drowning in a pool of morons and imbeciles.

Smack an RJ

The first thing I do after I get off work and start my car is turn on the radio, anticipating a musical ride home. Not gonna happen. This is Pakistan, after all. The first thing that blares through the speakers is a loud, shrilly voice of an overacting radio jockey who's yapping away and laughing at his own lame jokes. I wait a minute or two, while my car warms up, till the music starts. It doesn't happen. The schmuck behind the radio is still talking about rush hour, Michael Jackson, and anything else their puny brain can fart out at the speed of idiocy. I sigh, and drive home.

Now don't get me wrong, RJs are an important part of the whole radio experience, but that doesn't mean you hire people who are in love with their own voices and who never shut up for five minutes so that you can enjoy an entire song. Sometimes, the song they will say they're about to play next turns out to be one of your favorites, but then the inconsiderate buffoon keeps on blabbing for the next ten minutes. What is he thinking? Is he patching me a live feed to the artist, and is leading up to the big moment? I mean, who the hell in their right mind cares about your mindless chatter?

Also, right before that favorite song of yours is about to begin, when the chattering monkey has finally shut up, they go to a fifteen minute long ad break without warning. What a douche bag. It really makes me want to reach through the radio and wring their scrawny little neck. I would not mind the ads so much either, but keep in mind this is Pakistan, and the commercials usually involve overjoyed, and seemingly intoxicated, little girls singing happy songs that would make even Elmo run away and hide in embarrassment. For God's sake people, at least make some relevant ads!

Back to the topic at hand, Pakistani radio needs to change. They need to play more music. This goes for all the FM channels. For now, I'll rely on my ipod while driving, but sometimes you just want to listen to some mainstream music, and learn of some new songs. Isn't that what the radio is really there for? Bah!

Take My Money, Please!

My human resources manager calls me up today and asks for my National Tax Number (NTN), so that she can file my income tax for the month. I tell her I will get back to her, and after hanging up I whisper a frustrated curse, since I have no idea where I'll pull this rabbit out from. A colleague in the adjacent cubicle, upon hearing my woes, informs me that I can verify my NTN online, against my Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC). Thanking him for such simple advice, I log onto the website and put in my CNIC. Nothing turns up. I then put in my full name. Again, a webpage with contact details for the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) pops up. Sighing, I decide to give them a call.

After a few rings, a seemingly half-dead and semi-conscious voice answers 'Haylo'. I respond by telling him my problem of not finding my NTN online. He asks for my CNIC, and after a few seconds informs me that indeed my problem is a problem: I have no NTN. Great.

After hanging up, I struggle with the notion that I have no NTN, yet I know I paid my income tax in my previous job. I pick up the phone and call the HR department of my previous workplace. After exchanging the usual not-so-pleasantries with my ex-colleague, I ask her to locate my NTN against which she was filing my taxes. After a minute of keyboard clicking she tells me what the CBR zombie told me: No NTN. She then tells me that she had been filing my taxes against my CNIC, before the government had made it mandatory to file income taxes against NTNs. Fabulous.

It is settled, I decide to register for an NTN. I call up CBR again and ask the useless corpse how I can go about getting on the NTN bandwagon. He says I can submit a filled form in person, or I can submit one online. Taken aback by this awesome implementation of technology in this backward country, I ask him again very slowly, 'You sure I can submit the form online?', to which he replied extremely slowly, 'Haan jee. You can'.

Thanking him for his assistance, and excited about finally being able to get some quality government service in Pakistan, I quickly hung up and eagerly went in search for the form online. I went to the CBR website and found nothing. Googling 'NTN Pakistan' led me to the FBR website, which, to be honest, looked like a four year old web designer with an inhuman fondness of rainbows had created it.

After scanning the page, I clicked the link for online registration for salaried individuals. Woohoo! On the next page, it asked me to put in my CNIC number, which I did, after which it had the audacity to put in my NTN number, the very one I was registering for! Quickly counting to ten, and wary of breaking any of the new computer equipment provided by my new employers, I calmed down and decided to head back to the main page and search for another form.

After fifteen minutes of unsuccessfully trying to register on another page, which did not require an NTN, but also kept giving an error, I googled 'NTN Pakistan online registration'. I found one link to Pakistan's main government portal. There was a link there with the exact words I had googled, except in parenthesis was also written 'Under Testing'. With homicidal fervor, I clicked the link, which took me back to the FBR page that had been asking me to put my NTN to proceed. 'An NTN that I do not have!', I wanted to shout out at the top of my lungs and throw my monitor our the window, but the instinct of self preservation via steady income kept me from frothing at the mouth.

Now, however, I have downloaded an NTN registration form, and will physically go and shove it up that zombie's ass. Wish me luck.