Comments on: Pakistan Sizzles: Sibi to reach record temp on Friday?

By: ahsan

ahsan — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 05:27:10 +0000

[quote]Off topic, but I could not help admiring the simple but soft and pleasing architecture of the Sibi railway station. Obviously, it is a pre-Partition structure. And also, one canâ€t help noticing the totally unnecessary and avoidable post-Partition additions to the building. The electric cables etc.[/quote] Dear MQ, I looked into the picture and I am sure that you are not simply aiming at the Electric Cables. On the top of the building there is a long tablet with some Arabic inscription which looks rather odd at the Raliway Station. I suppose it is some extra addition, in the later days of the Islamic movements, and it is to give the Station an Islamic credential. It reminds me the recent event in France that an Artist wanted to paint the highest peak of "Mont-Blanc" red to make it an Art Object. Luckily he was not allowed to do so by civil authorities. I suppose in the case of Sibi Railway Station this particular addition is not in the name of Art or Architeture but in the name of Allaah and no body can dare to remove it. Thus, my dear MQ, all you can do is "Look at it and admire" and repeat the kalamah. Ahsan

By: Faraz

Faraz — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:14:46 +0000

Brutal heat! I lived in Phoenix for a few years where temperatures in upper 110s (47 C) are pretty common and the summers were quite painful. But 57 C is just mind-boggling.

I think the biggest problem for Pakistan, as an agricultural country, will not be so much the temperatures themselves, but the dried up rivers. Once the glaciers in Afghanistan and Kashmir have melted away, will our rivers dry up? Or will climate change bring increased rainfall compensating for the shrinking glaciers?

By: Aqil Sajjad

Aqil Sajjad — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:06:04 +0000

On a tangent, one problem is that a lot of our construction these days is not designed to have proper ventillation and good insulation. This is partly due to electricity, we no longer feel the need to pay attention to these things because we can just turn on our fans and air conditioners.
But this is not a positive trend, we should promote construction that is taylored according to our weather requirements so that we rely less on electricity and other forms of energy to keep the temperature in our houses/buildings in a comfortable range.