After 8 hours of gruelly air travel, we finally made it to Lahore. During the flight, I was fully entertained by the Audiobook I have gotten from the Library, talking about the origin of coal and how it sparked off the industrialization process. Very interesting…
We were seated next to this Pakistani lady. She had trouble with her in-flight entertainment so I gallantly helped her with it. We did some small talk after that… and I learned that she was actually staying in Canada and was back to Karachi because her mother was sick. When I told her about my intention of starting a business in Lahore, first thing she said is:
As a fellow Pakistani, I will advise you to be careful…. and take care of myself….
Wow… this is getting scary…. I have been to Nepal, and nobody ever mentioned about being careful… etc….
Anyway, upon arrival at the airport, we were picked up by the driver from Mirage Hotel. It was night time… and getting in to the car with this black guy is kind of uncomfortable. Thankfully, we made it safely to the hotel… Mirage Lahore.
On the left is a picture of the toilet. It is mid-ranged… and was really glad that my GF did not make a big fuss about it….
Just when I was about to retire for the night, I suddenly realized that my server was not working. I nearly freaked out when I realised that my root password was locked out. Basically, I called everybody in Singapore, from my mother to my office staff to Jiang Hao.
Fortunately, it was one of those rare instances of time when I could successfully reach Jiang Hao…. He made a trip to the data center and got the websites up… The database applications took another 12 hours… and my staff ( all prolific liars by now…:P ) reassured customers that it was just a routine database maintenance.
Day One – Lahore
We made a list of the things we needed to accomplish:
- Setting up the bank account
- Getting a mobile phone at Pakistan
- Yellow pages (with listings of Accountants, Auditors, Real Estate Agents, Recruitment firms
- SEC to set up a company
For the bank account, we got started with Standard Chartered,
- Umar Chatta,
0321-8499999.
Standard Chartered Bank (Pakistan) Limited,
Mall Road Branch,
Tufail Road Lahore Cantt, Tufail Road
Lahore – Pakistan
We traveled around Lahore in the Tu-Tu cars. Fare prices are generally in the 50-100 Rupees. I think this was really reasonable as the distances were quite substantial…One of our tu-tu cars broke down.. and the poor guy had to part push part ride …Overall, we finished most of the things we wanted to do except for the setting up of the company. I have decided to engage a local person to help ‘cos it is just too troublesome. The price range as mentioned by the SEC guy is from 10k – 20k rupees. Little did he know….all the service providers charge us from 90k – 270k rupees. Will go through my list of auditors tomorrow…Our Taxi broke down
Armed Security Guards (they are in all major buildings… armed with a rifle and pistol.
Everybody is bemused to see 2 Chinese wandering around the city. We get stares everywhere… (partly because Denise was wearing shorts… not advisable in Paistan) the motorcyclists were so bemused that we were taking their pics that they took off their helmets for a better shot.
Polution is rampant. Makes me appreciate our 10 year COE. The fumes given out my the old cars in Lahore makes the air really unclean.
Students protesting about excessively high school fees
