Postcards from Hell: 11. Dinner delivered

This smart directory was delivered to my door recently. Inside are listed the menus of 31 Islamabad restaurants. The concept is simple. Dial up a central phone number – or visit the website – place an order and wait for dinner. Not exactly revolutionary. But failed states tend not to have such services. Not even for qat deliveries.

Postcards from Hell is my ironically titled list of things that are cool about Pakistan, my new home, or which contradict the notion that the country is some sort of failed state

Limited soul searching in Pakistan on grooming case

The Pakistani media have not overly troubled themselves with the Rochdale sex grooming convictions. While British newspapers have pondered the role of Islam, cultural differences and attitudes towards women in the crimes, in Pakistan the newspapers have limited themselves to short news reports and nothing in the way of reflection.

So interesting to see The Express Tribune publish a sensible editorial on the subject. Ultimately it asks where backwards attitudes towards women in Pakistan are to blame:

It cannot be denied that in some settings, men from this part of the world look down on those women who they believe don’t abide by strict interpretations of women’s religiously sanctioned roles. In fact, men raised with these beliefs about women tend to justify such perverse action through abuse. Following this incident, the Pakistani community in Britain should reassess how well it spreads the message of tolerance, justice and respect for the law among its members. Rather than feeling victimised or maligned by media attention surrounding the issue, the community must use this opportunity to create awareness in an effort to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

This is the only discussion on the subject I’ve seen.

Supreme Court Verdict

I’ll be honest, this gave me something of a headache when I opened up the papers during the week.

Managing Contacts

Some of my gear from a previous trip, including 7 – my much loved and missed Palm Tx

The past few months has seen me forced into a bit of an IT overhaul after I had a load of computer gear stolen. Perhaps the biggest headache has been trying to work out the best way to manage my contacts.

For the past 10 years I’ve been using Palm computers, from the simple Palm m100 to the Palm Tx which was the one stolen from my car in January. It had a simple desktop, long battery life and – crucially – the ability to search by keyword.

But with Palm no longer making its own computers and with the PDA no longer in fashion, I’ve had to look for a different way to manage contacts.

The problem is that it’s all about the cloud these days. For journalists, that means a problem with security for contact details that might be sensitive. Then what happens if the service entrusted with my 3000 contacts suddenly stops operating overnight? And such a service is useless if internet access is sporadic – such as in Libya last year.

So I tried gist but packed it in pretty fast. Although it has a sophisticated way of keeping contacts up to date, its cloud-only service would leave me too vulnerable to dodgy internet connections when out and about. And what is an internet start-up that doesn’t charge for its service and is then taken over by RIM going to do with all my hard-earned contacts? Nothing good, I suspect.

In the end, though the most important thing for me is having all my contacts downloaded on to some sort of device that I can carry with me.

So I opted for Gmail. Not the sexiest of ideas, I grant you, but with Google Sync installed on my Blackberry it means that soon after I have entered new details via my internet-connected desktop they are entered into the address book on my handset. They are also transferred to my Android tablet (a Samsung, if you are interested).

The system is not perfect. My Blackberry 9900 has a pretty lame battery life. A day without being able to recharge would bring everything to a crashing halt. It’s a cloud-based system with all the security concerns that brings. And most irritating of all, I haven’t worked out how to do a keyword search on the BB address book. That’s not an issue if I have my tablet (offline) with me but – there are times when I won’t.

So, I’m still tempted to snap up a used Palm. Or does anyone have a better way of managing things?

Reporting Syria and future emergencies

Jess Hill has an interesting post over at The Global Mail, discussing how opposition activists in Syria are distorting the information fed to journalists…

But it’s not the information — it’s someinformation. Syrian activists are not journalists — they’re activists. They’re risking their lives to get their story out, and many pursue a specific agenda: to convince the international community to intervene and arm the opposition.

Of course, it will come as little shock to most journalists that activists are prepared to twist the truth to serve their agenda. That’s the deal. I interview you and get a story, while you get a chance to promote your message. That’s why most journalists are professional cynics. Why is this person telling me this? What do they gain? What are other people saying? Whose side are they on?

This much is obvious and is no great surprise.

But the real issue of course is that it is so difficult for journalists to get in and close up to the truth. Those that have done – again as Hill points out with the help and guidance of opposition activists – will still be bombarded with propaganda, but at least there is a chance of seeing, smelling and tasting things first hand. Most have to make do with reporting from outside and that’s what makes it so hard to judge…

In the short term at least, journalists have little choice but to continue to rely on activists for much of their information. The challenge for the media, however, is to go beyond the heroes versus villains narrative that’s developed over the past year, and to interrogate some harder truths.

Why, after a year of horrific violence, do significant number of Syrians still support the regime, or at least the status quo? Why, after so long, have there still been no major defections from the government? And who are the armed opposition groups known as the Free Syrian Army?

Regular readers of this blog will know where I’m about to go…

Now does this sound familiar? It sounds to me much like coverage of the Darfur conflict as it unfolded. Journalists prevented from entry relying on a small collection of opposition voices, rebel commanders who know what they want and articulate it via satphones. In the case of Sudan, the cause was taken up by a lobby with a very definite interventionist agenda, fuelled by dissidents outside the country.

So the point I want to make is that ultimately this is the way coverage of humanitarian crises is going. Famine and conflict do not occur in liberal democracies. They occur in oppressive regimes that want to keep journalists out. Next year it could be North Korea.

Journalists will increasingly be reporting by remote control. That should not be an excuse for failing to question the source of information. That’s the job. And just because our sources are battling an undeniably BAD MAN, we shouldn’t assume they are telling the truth or take anything for granted. And that goes for Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and George Clooney too.

Distinguished feature

My life is full of tentative greetings in coffeeshops and lobbies. A nervous “I don’t suppose you’re such and such?” Or “are you the chap from the such and such.” Often baffled strangers smile nervously and shoo me away. Sometimes I’ll mistake the assistant or secretary for the boss. Or worse, I’ll make the mistake the other way around.

But there was no mistaking the man with the massive moustache.

Still looking for the perfect laptop

So this is going well. I’ve only had my new laptop for about six weeks and already I’ve wrecked it. Well, wrecked is maybe a bit strong. But getting out of the car on Friday I dropped my bag (more on the bag another time). Later I discovered I’d chipped off a chunk of the corner of my new Dell Vostro. It means that the plastic supporting the screen is cracked and the casing surrounding one of the speakers in the base is broken. Maybe it will be fine, or maybe it’s the beginning of the end.

The upshot is that having initially been pretty impressed by my Dell Vostro I now seriously doubt that it will be strong enough to survive on the road with me.

I don’t think I’m very fussy but after being a foreign correspondent for seven or so years now I’m getting to know what I need. Basically what I want is a computer built along the following lines:

• 13-inch screen – small enough to be portable, but not as fiddly as a netbook for those times I need to knock out a swift 1000 word
• sturdy – I’ll be on the road, bumping around. Sometimes I’ll be typing in the back of a 4×4, so I don’t want the screen bouncing around with every bump of the road
• simple – I don’t need your fancy graphic cards or masses of Ram. I’ll just be using a browser, a word processing application and a few simple bits and bobs
• good battery life – for those times when I’m far from power sockets (or when the electricity is off at home)

I’m still no closer to working out what might be the best laptop for my needs. a 13″ screen puts me into the realm of business computers, which ups all the specs.   Anyway,  in the past few years here’s what I’ve been using:

Sony Vaio – can’t quite remember the exact model, but it was the s series and I bought it in 2006. Initially wasn’t sure. But this served me well. Pricey and overspecced. Quite heavy. But although the optical drive packed in after a couple of years it proved sturdy and reliable. Came with loads of irritating Sony software though. Eventually died a couple of years ago after four years loyal service

Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 13 – sturdy build, as you’d expect from this company, and I did without an optical drive to save weight. But the performance was lousy.   Crashed all the time until I uninstalled Google Chrome. But still very slow. Never managed to get it to work with my Thuraya satphone. Maybe because it was running the 64-bit version of Windows 7. If I hadn’t moved to Pakistan I would have taken it back to the shop to get them to sort it out, maybe reinstall Windows and what have you. Its hard drive packed in on way home from Libya last year – so maybe not as sturdy as I’d hoped. Anyway, thieves took it off my hands a couple of months ago. Think I paid about £500 for it.

Dell Vostro v131 – Again it cost me about £500, which I thought was pretty good here in Islamabad. Performance has been excellent. This time it’s running 32-bit Windows 7. I’ve done without Word in favour of OpenOffice and Chrome works wonderfully. The backlit keyboard will be useful when I’m filing in the dark. The fingerprint scanner doesn’t seem to work, but really who cares? The real issue, however, is that its lightness translates into flimsiness. The screen wobbles in the breeze. And a simple spill has broken the casing, which is a shame because so far I like it.

Ultimately, if I knew a bit more about computers I’d have a stab at sorting my own specs and getting someone to build it for me. I’d willingly pay a bit more for a sturdy frame and a small screen, and then compromise on performance and software. I’m sure there must be a way of getting everything I need into a computer for say £350. Any suggestions?

(And Apple fans will note from my requirements that whizz-bang fancy Macs are really not what I’m looking for…)