Day 008 – BIRDZ, Paki = AdWorld, Bata…

What about the birdz? Till now I have noticed three districts of Karachi: one of them is ruled by crowes (thats where we live), one by pigeons and one by falcons (where our office is). For a Slovak guy, for whom seeing a falcon was a symbol of nature or medieval hunts, seeing dozens of falcons right out of the window is still astonishing…
Our first meeting was like this: I went to the toilet (eegit, turkish style…) and had a look out of window… and there is a falcon watching me… so I take out the camera… very carefully aim and take the picture… just to find out that there is another five or six of them watching me Honestly, I have seen at least fifty of them sitting and flying around our office block.

An now to the ads… Do You know the song “Mad world” from Gary Jules? Well Pakistan is in a way maybe mad, but Karachi is for sure Ad… Advertisements are everywhere and the sizes are amazing (5×10 m in centre of city? no problem!). In a country where Coke costs 1/3 EUR per 1,5 l bottle (and You can literally buy it Everywhere) and Pizza Hut/McDonalds/Dunkin Donuts/Subway are as frequent as Grocery shops You can feel like biz rules the world…
Example. The dark picture is a monument next to road reminding on the principles of country (I think faith and order). The light spot is an Ad of a restaurant called “Tasty”. The restaurant can have ad ON (stickers on its base) and AROUND (city lights) the monument and for that keep the monument clean. It works, no grafitti, no dirt, fresh green around…

Just to add … On the way from airport (3 a.m.) we stopped by for some late-night snacks. I have tasted “Icecream with noodles” and “saltish pink tea with pistacia”… Not really my flavours.

Now a VERY weird thing I have bumped into today… One of the most favourite shoe brands of Pakistan is BATA! I found out this company is amazing! Check out www.bata.pk, but for Your info, there are towns called Batovany (Slovakia, renamed into Partizanske in 1949), Batawa (Toronto, Canada), Batanagar (Kolkata, India) and Bata Pura (Lahore, Karachi)…