ATP Team

Welcome to Pakistaniat.com. The new home of All Things Pakistan (ATP).

We moved all the posts and comments from the old ATP address here late this evening; because it had to be a real time move, we are now in the process of ironing out some small kinks, which we hope to remove soon. So, please bear with us; and if you have any suggestions do let us know since we will finalize this over the next couple of days.

It has been a whirlwind of a ride for us here at ATP. The blog is just two and a half months old. Adil Najam started the blog as ‘something to do over the summer’ and the first post had gone up on June 11, 2006. By July 16, we were up to 100 posts and had developed a small but faithful readership. One August 18, ATP formally became a team blog with Bilal and Owais joining Adil. Today, on September 1, we have moved to our own domain-name (Pakistaniat.Com) in this redesigned format.

Bilal Zuberi

I just read this in the news. Daily Times has reported the inauguration of The Centaurus, Pakistan’s first seven-star hotel project, in Islamabad.

I am left wondering what are these people thinking? Can Pakistan afford, and sustain, a 7-star hotel? Do we really need one? And what is a 7-star hotel, after all? We can barely maintain a decent 2 or 3 star hotel in our major cities. Are we now competing with Dubai for architectural grandiosity? And whoever came up with the name should probably look for a job in Hollywood…

ISLAMABAD: The Centaurus, Pakistan’s first seven-star hotel project, was inaugurated on Thursday. The $350 million complex is planned to have a 37-storey deluxe hotel, with two 21-storey residential towers, a 25-storey corporate office complex, and a 5-storey shopping mall. The complex will have a parking lot that would accommodate over 2,000 vehicles. The project will be completed in three years… The Pak Gulf Construction Private Limited company (PGCL) and Messrs Atkins engineering company – the constructors of Dubai’s renowned Burj Al Arab – are executing the project. Saudi Arabian Al-Tamimi Group and the Sardar Group of Companies are making the investment….

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Owais Mughal

Following news items have been taken from today’s Urdu press viz.,Jang and Nawaiwaqt. You don’t have to find these news funny but they may cause some smiles and some amusement.

Take a Look. Click on images below to see their larger and readable text.

(1) First news appears in Nawaiwaqt. Here our famous ‘Cultural Reporter’ reports about Pakistani movies which will be screened in Sri Lanka in two phases. so far so good, but then I enjoyed reading names of some of these movies. e.g. ‘naag aur naagan’ (A male and a female snake), Jungle Queen, ‘Larki Punjaban’ (A Punjabi Girl), ‘Dakoo Rani’ (Bandit Queen), ‘kuRiaaN shehr diyaaN’ (City Girls) etc. I wonder if these are best movie exports we can do?