Scene 5: Night ONE at Serena Hotel.
There had been another development during the day and it was that MS PAK has arranged a conference call with MS Redmond office. This call was to be attended by top architects in Microsoft office, Jawwad ur Rehman, Rizwan, Abid and my self. But the down side was that Rizwan and Abid said that we should be attending meeting together and that implied I wont be able to get to Farhan's place. And I guessed it right that it would create an utter disappointment to Farhan, because he has literally been waiting whole day and night long. I had no other choice but to call him and make an excuse. By that time we were all getting hungry, so Rizwan ordered for the dinner while I changed clothes and put on a t-shirt and a pajama. We ate food (some fajita rolls, dal(Pulse) fried and a club sandwich), and it tasted good Alhamdulillah. As soon as I ate the food I felt drowsiness capturing me like any thing and soon I was half sleep. Then Mr. Abid and Mr. Rizwan realized I should be spared from another discussion and allowed to rest, this rest was all important because there was a meeting (on line conference call coming up) in the morning. SO I (and every body else) slept and we woke up at quarter to 6 in the morning every body had alarmed set for that and even before any alarm would have ringed Jawwad sahib has called us. Before US guys would join in, (to be continued)

Scene 4: Meeting at PM Secretariat

We had called Mr. Abid to reach to PM Secretariat while we left for the same place. We reached there in time, thanks to AVIS service. Neither Mr. Rizwan nor did I have my name on the list we were told by the guard at the gate. Then Rizwan called in to some Colonel to get us in, and in a few minutes we got the clearance and were entering the PM Sect. It was really quite an experience. I had never thought I’d be attending a meeting at PM Sect. Anyways, we went into the building and there was a large hall where all the people were sitting and waiting for the meeting to being. Almost every one had a laptop placed in front of them. Wi-Fi was available and people were even checking their emails. Anyways the meeting started when Gen. Arif (of CRI) reached in he shook his hands with every one. He seemed like a real gentleman well dressed and well presented (that’s what General is supposed to look like), but honestly speaking Gen. Arif looked very worried and concerned and perhaps tensed. Or at least so it looked to me. Meeting started with people telling about the progresses that have been made in each front. Honestly I felt like it was all too haphazard and every one was trying to do every thing. Strange thing was that there was no co-ordination in between the attendees and they dint seem to make a unit called "Team". The meeting kept going on and going on and on and on, and Mr. Abid joined us in a meanwhile. I forgot to mention that Farhan was waiting for me all day long, he expected to meet me in an after noon at around 3 PM, then at iftar and then he was waiting for me to come in night. He kept calling me every now and then and smses were exchanged and I kept telling him that I am "almost" done with and will be with him shortly. That wasn’t to be the case. At around midnight Gen. Farooq came in the meeting and God it felt great to have him around. He was wearing his commando uniform and what an aura he created around him. He was very casual with his expression, talking in a low, friendly but very clear voice. What he said clearly defined the direction in which all the efforts should be carried out. I really like being there and tried to understand every single word he was saying. It was around 1:15 AM when the meeting ended. And I called nomi that I am done with the meeting and will be seeing him shortly.

Scene 3: Evening at Serena:

I left Chaklala with Rizwan and we reached Serena hotel at around 3 PM. By the time we reached Serena Rizwan had identified a couple of tasks for me and the most important one was a logical flow of operations being carried out at Chaklala Airport. Serena hotel is a beautiful place to be at scenery around, architecture and interior design every thing almost perfect. I like being there. But honestly i dint have much time to admire this all, I had a lot of things to do. I was done with the logical flow by 5 PM in the evening and in parallel i had considered installing sharepoint portal server as well, Rizwan was much interested in showcasing SPS as a front end. I hadn’t offered prayers for Duhr and time was running out for ASR as well so I excused Rizwan for namaz and he said he himself wanted to go downstairs, we went down i performed wudhu and offered my prayers out in the lawn. By that time a hint of chill could be felt in air.Rizwan booked an iftar buffet for both of us and we were there to do iftari. Food wasn’t out of this world, barbeque was also arranged out in the lawn but people had literally queued to get hold of Tikkas, Botis and what not. We couldn’t afford to wait for our turn since we had another meeting scheduled at 6:15 which was by now a couple of minutes away. So we sort of had to left the place with stomachs half filled (but bellies bulging out ;). This meeting was with Arshad and Imran, we aligned our selves for the objectives that we shared and highlighted roles to be played by each one of us, i.e. by my self and Imran. It was decided that I'd be taking care of Application Architecture while Imran will be a team lead and will be responsible for over all system architecture. When meeting was finished, it was around 7:30 in the evening. That meant we had 30 mins to catch up with the meeting at PM Secretariat.

Scene 2: Welcome at Chaklala Air Base

When we reached there (in 5 mins or so) we were made to wait for security related checks and some Major sahib had to call and get us in. While waiting for the security proceedings to end, I saw US marines moving around in their "Martian" vehicles as if it was Guantanamo bay rather than PAF's Chaklala air base. When we finally got in the base I got to see many foreigners moving around and sitting in their make shift tents. We went directly into a bunker where Col. Jamil and his team were working for data gathering and presentation making stuff and all. There in the briefing room were sitting 4-6 volunteers from COMSATs and NETSOL and working on spread sheets making some report for Col. sahib. I was introduced to them and we all sat together and came up with a conceptual diagram for relief operations being carried out at PAF Base Chaklala, interestingly which was something close to what Mr Abid and Mr Rizwan had discussed a night before. By the time we were done with this diagram, I felt like I had to go to washroom. When I asked about washroom, that peon said "sahib paani khatam hai aur darwaza band hai"... after waiting for a few more minutes I told Mr. Abid that I'd like to go to washroom and he in turn he asked some Major sahib. That Major sahib got the door opened and water was flowing from taps as if they were Niagara falls. I got through the regular process and GOD I felt swift ;). Then we moved to warehouse and on our way to warehouse, I saw number of massive air crafts, Russian, Sri Lankan, Chinese, etc. In warehouse I got to meet Mr. Arshad for the first time and there were also Imran and Shireen with him. Mr. Arshad proudly (read very proudly) introduced Imran as The Standford graduate. By this time I was starting to feel hint of politics and mess that was around this all. Every body was trying to get the hold of things and not really "only" concerned about getting the job done. I felt so because there was redundancy, every body doing every thing. But soon I got used to it and realized that’s how things operate in this part of the world. That when I limited my self to the role I had to play and committed my self for value addition and contributing some thing that I can always be proud of. I was never looking for accolades and medals but deep inside I wanted to do some thing good for my country men for my country.

Scene 1: Touchdown:-

At 700 am I reached ISB airport. Flight went good. I enjoyed Air blue, no not because of the air-hostesses but because of the girl sitting on seat next to me, just kidding. I liked Air Blue because of the plane was good and with those LCD displays showing preventive measures and stuff looked good. Every thing looked new and especially since last time I was air-borne through aero-Asia (Russian air craft, Russian pilot and Russian crew...). Well when I reached airport it was fairly hassle-free to get the luggage and come out of air port fairly easily and quickly.

When I came out I called my hotel to confirm for my room and the hotel guy said "yes, we have a room booked for you.. And our address is ....” Just then I thought I better get in touch with MS folks and I called Mr. Abid Minhas and his phone was on voice recording and I left a message for him that I have reached and ISB and need to know about the action plan. Just when I was about to get a cab and leave for my hotel I got a call from Mr. Abid asking about whom I was and I reminded him that "this is Hammad, we talked yesterday on phone when I was visiting MS Karachi office and was with Mr. Zafar." He said ohh... Mr. Hammad, how are you welcome on board. When I asked him about action plan he said I have 2 choices 1- Red Pill 2- Blue Pill, I said red-bull (energy drink: p)... just kidding. The choices I had were 1- I go to hotel check in there and then ASAP get back to Chaklala air base. 2- I wait for him to pick me up from airport in a 20-25 mins and then go straight to Chaklala. I opted for option 2. During this I received a couple of calls from Farhan asking about my plan and other stuff. Farhan called in from office and initially we decided that we will be meeting after Zuhr at around 2:30 PM (this could not happen till next couple of days).
I dint know if I had to wait for more than hour and all that sitting on an un-comfortable plastic seat placed in the corridor of an airport. Well after long wait Mr. Abid came finally and I put all my luggage in to his car and we left for Chaklala (la la la) air base.

Preface:

Project : Automation of Federal Relief Commission’s Relief, Rehabilitation Efforts
My Role: .NET Architect / MS Consultant/ Application Development Lead
Location: Islamabad.
Duration: 1 Week (7 Days and Eight Nights)

People:
Hammad Rajjoub (Kalsoft/.NET Architect/Consultant)
Rizwan Munawwar (Microsoft/ Consultant / Lead)
Abid Minhas (Microsoft / Consultant)
Zafarul Islam (Microsoft/ Consultant)
Dr. Romana (COMSATS/ DB Expert)
Mustahsan (COMSATS/ Chairman CS Dept.)
Imran Moinuddin (NexOps/Lead Application Architecture Group)
Arshad Syed (AKD/Consultant)
Shireen Khan(CGI/Coordinator)
Shahid Mehar (Netsol/DB Architect)
Moshin (COMSATS/Coordinator)
Ali Gondal (Netsol/ Software Engineer)