Mortgage Madness

There days I have three running high priority tasks.

1. Select and appropriate Apartment to buy as the recession is officially over (has been over for sometime now and I am late to seize the opportunity) in Dubai and rentals and property prices are rising in Dubai and Sharjah.
2. Assess, evaluate and select the most appropriate mortgage provider. (I am not a cash buyer sadly)
3. Get tasks 1 & 2 executed in coordination together.

Finding, viewing and selecting and appropriate apartment which fits in my budget, is decent and in an accessible location has proven to be very challenging. I bet that is the case for everyone selecting a property and making one of the largest investments they will ever make.
I already have a pre-approval from my preferred bank. SCB has quite possibly the lowest margin + floating rate mortgages in the market and is very transparent about pricing and charges. You can also pre-settle / partial pre-settle the mortgage without paying any penalties.
The biggest is limitation with them is that they only finance a limited number of properties and developments in Dubai.
So, I need to have an alternate provider who will finance anything completed with a title deed. Any suggestions a welcome. I intend to list the various providers and their current offers as I get those details.
Most important I guess is the interest rate charge along with their pre-settlement and close out terms.

SCB : Rate SCBMR + 2 % (1yr Cost of funds + margin)  or 3.60-70 %, the cheapest I have come across, with no partial settlement/ early settlement charge.

HSBC : Rate 3 Month Eibor + 3.19% (margin + liquidity premium) or 4.49 % (cost of funds + 3.19%) hence HSBC dubai's internal cost of funds is 1.3 % for 3 months. Loan closure fees AED 2500. No partial settlement charges but if settlement closes out loan then Loan closure fees apply.

Ajman Bank : 1st year teaser rate of 3% salary transfer / 4% non salary transfer, goes to 5.5% after the first year. didn't consider them as they were not as good as HSBC.

Here Comes Another Bubble - The Richter Scales

O my God... there is absolutely no bubble in Technology... Blog Blog.. Blog it all.. We are a line of ants. Shit man this is going to be my role model of that tech company that I wanted to start when I gave my LUMS interview.

4Gb for Lums Webmail

The default space available on the Lums Webmail email server is a measly 50megs for students although they are upgrading this to 100mb soon. This can be and is very restrictive given the high volume of emails that one receives on a daily basis at Lums due to the use of group accounts for mass emailing. Having attachments aggravates this even further. One need to delete emails on a regular basis to keep your account from overflowing, emails that one would have liked to kept for future reference.

Desktop Email Clients
One solution is to setup an desktop email application, like Outlook or even better Thunderbird, to download your emails off the server to your computer. This is fairly straight forward and you just need the setting for the webmail pop server. The cons to this approach are, what if you don't have a PC of your own at Lums or you are a hostalite and can't take your hostile resident desktop PC home with you. In that case you don't have access to your old emails when you are away from your desktop PC. One solution to this dilemma is to have a Laptop with an email client, but even with a Laptop I feel that I need access to my emails from my home PC and sometimes the Lab PC for printing or scanning, so in a nutshell I like the accessibility of having my emails available online so I can access them from anywhere and I also don't want to delete many of the email for future reference.

The best of both worlds
So, we want both storage space and web accessibility. The answer is to gmail; gmail has an feature that allows you to access and retrieve email from other pop email servers (like the lums email server) and save them to your gmail account under a label. If you set this up, gmail automatically retrieves emails from your webmail account and saves them to gmail separate from your regular emails. It will also allow you to send email using your lums email address. Gmail sorta replaces your desktop email client (ie Outlook) with a web alternative. Plus you don't have to ever worry about space, attachments or deleting emails as Gmail is now offering about 4Gb plus of space.
If anyone want to know how to set this up for your account, please post your comments in replay to this post and I will post a how-to of the process.

Govt. Brutaility Against Protesters [Pictures]

PakistanUncut.com has a compilation of protest crackdown photos from various sources depicting protests by lawyers and civil society against imposition of marshal law, imprisonment and dismissal of Judiciary in Pakistan. The brutality of Govt. crackdown against protesters and also members of civil society that were indoors just disgusts me.

http://www.pakistanuncut.com/2007/11/06/emergency-protest-in-pictures/

Liberty Freedom Resistance

Liberty Freedom Resistance, originally uploaded by Omar Ayaz.

Live free or dying trying... there are many responsible for this mess we are in now as a nations, some more than others.. but to find the most responsible, you only have to look in the mirror.

DARRA: A special place for special people

This is really educational guys, you need to watch this. I love Naeem Afrid's lines in his video. I wana go to Darra at least once, who is with me. Listen to Alvi's comments about the US war in Afghanistan at the end of this video...

P.S. Ayub Afridi came up with idea or maybe it was the CIA's idea to use heroine money to finance the arms for the Afgan conflict, but Ayub actually organized the warlords and made it happen at he behest of the CIA.

PAKISTAN ZINDABAD

GEOs Greatest Victory

Please view the last hours of GEO News on air, they are really compelling. I am particularly proud of GEO, as in Dr Shahid's words, even in this shutdown is our victory as we didn't surrender our integrity at any cost and went down fighting. We did justice to our duty. We went down fighting for integrity.
pkpolitics.blip.tv

Its rare to see much a moving display of integrity, sense of righteousness against all odds. Maybe its our lack of empathy for the injustice that happens in our society that is our downfall. Why don't we protect an institution that helped us in forming opinions and kept us informed.

GEO and AAJ although they are not flawless (and no media is an where in the world) have become priceless institutions for the people of Pakistan. It is the responsibility of you the people to help them in their time of need, remember their services at the time of the earthquake, they made this nation whole again, helped mobilize relief from the common man. We would have never seen such an local and international response if it weren't for this free media. If it were up to the state run channels we would have never seen the extent of the human loss and suffering. We see their services again and again in the crisis on the judiciary, in the Lal Masjid slaughter. If it weren't for the this media all you would here was the Govt. line. Although I am not satisfied with their coverage in this event as they couldn't tell you the true death toll due to army blackout and curfew. They did show you how this is a military state. I still remember Talat talking to chudhary Shujat.

I want that freedom to question our so called elected representatives and I think we all need it. I am also appalled at the International lack of coverage and debate on this atrocity against media not only in Pakistan but also international subservience to the GOP.
Media City Dubai, well I never thought they would move against GEO in such a manner, Still there is no International outcry against this move by any media agency.
CNN ran a story but it is drowned on their website now, but i see no coverage on NewYorkTimes, BBC any many other web sources..
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/11/16/pakistan.tv/index.html

Second Vigil at LUMS, Lahore

2nd Vigil at LUMS, Lahore, originally uploaded by Omar Ayaz.

Nov 17, 2007: Candle light vigil observed at Lums protesting marshal law in Pakistan. Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais, Professor of Political Science and Head, Department of Social Sciences expressing his through at the occasion

more:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/omarayaz/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/pakistanpolitics/pool/

CP Feedback

Got a 1st Quartile in SCM and a 2nd Quartile in PM, the quizzes are not that good still.

Session with Zubyr Soomro

Today we had a mandatory attendance Speaker Session with MD & CCO Citigroup Zubyr Soomro. I didn't know who this guy was from the outset then again its a well known fact that I am not too connected and socially challenged.
So, I have just walked into the auditorium 10 minutes late, with every intention on reading the PM(Project Management) case that I have to prepare for tomorrow. I don't know who this guy is, he is well dressed and judging from his speaking style, he is well educated and has been working abroad. His presentation was all about CSR and ground realities in Pakistan, the NGOs working here and their setup - how the sector was unregulated with no proper reporting or auditing by the Govt - the work different NGOs were doing, the innovative ideas people had come up with. He talked about micro-finance sector, Kashf & the Grameen model.
The last part of his presentation was of global efforts by agencies like Pennies for Peace, a charity the allows you to specify how your money was going to be used, sustainable efforts for poverty alleviation, education and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
He made a lot of references to Clinton's book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World. I kinda want to read that now, but not before i read "In the line of fire" of which all library copies have been issued for as far as i can remember.
Well, it was a good session, he end with telling us about the turn arround at UBL and his experiences there. About how switching is a good thing but not every 3 years, you can't learn or contribute anything in that time-frame. I have to agree that from his perspective, that of a bank, that is very correct indeed. He also egged us on that we should go work in an NGO, the Acumen Fund etc, give something back to everyone else who is not so fortunate, kind of touched me there. I wonder if i would have the chance to do that this life.
Mr. Butt and the Dean was there, I kinda of knew this guy was a big-shot from Butt's presence as this is probably the only speaker session that he has sat through. Also, i fear that Butt didn't know that his presentation was going to be about Social Development. These guys are doing Risk Management seminar at IBA and we are getting lesson on social development, he must have thought.

Karachi Console War

There is an interesting post that i came across.. about the current console war.. between the nex-gen PS3 and 360 and the semi-next-gen Wii... at.. the Pakistan Uncut blog.. the blog is covering various topics from windows gaming, mobiles to console gaming.. to even promoting Pakistan as a tourism destination... :) I don't know the author(s) but i have to comment that its an enjoyable read.. playstation-3-will-make-a-hit

Test Purposes only...