It is not uncommon for students here to have uni on Saturdays, so if you’re an ambitious student, Sunday is the day for you to attend some other studies-related but not grade-relevant activities to pimp your CV; such as the Youth to Business Forum which AIESEC in IBA held for the 3rd time this year.
This was basically a mix of conference, motivation speeches and tracks sessions at IBA’s main campus in the city center. It was under the motto of planning for success (or not planning, as we heard in the first lecture and I personally tend to believe in).
I had never attended such an event before and was unsure of what to wear, as we knew we’d be the only “internationals” at the conference, and, of course, we showed up over-dressed, but it was too warm for the blazer anyway, so I quickly got rid of it.
“Youth to Business Forum is an international conference hosted by AIESEC around the globe. It follows a comprehensive structure presented by AIESEC’s international community with a common agenda, pressing on economic, social and cultural issues, that is universally followed. The conference aims to develop, hone and transpire the talents of potential young leaders, thus enabling them to impact the community and the world on a much larger scale. Selected individuals are given a unique opportunity to broaden their corporate network while communicating and interacting with distinguished speakers and notable personalities from the social and corporate sector; impelling them to be engaged and inspired by them, and encouraging them to develop actionable ideas for society as mature and sound leaders. This year, AIESEC in IBA aims to achieve this through the theme ‘Planning for Success’.” -http://aieseciniba.com/karachiy2b/
The whole thing started in the morning at about 9/10am – on a Sunday! – and lasted all day long. There were some food breaks, obviously, and the food was great! It was very interested, but still, in the late evening we were quite exhausted by listening to lectures which not all were in English, but also partly or fully in Urdu, so our friends Moomal and Aruba showed us around the campus instead. We found this foosball midway, and just had to play a few rounds – of which the German team won all (two, to be exact) as we are proud to announce! 😉
We took our time, having a chat about different schooling and educational systems in different countries while sitting on the football court (mosquito repellent was working, luckily) and watching the early sunset. By the time we came back to the conference, it was dark and time to take the final pictures (see first and last picture in this post) and then soon to go home – or some other places!!
Aaqib and Sufian (two guys, for those unfamiliar with Pakistani names) took Vivian and me to that coolly decorated cafe called The Hot Spot Cafe where Vivian ordered a Chocolate Fudge Cake with vanilla ice cream and I ordered a Chocolate Chip Cookie Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich – fancy name, right? 
Two more friends joined us, we grabbed some tea and spontaniously drove to seaview, the commercialised area of Clifton Beach in Karachi. Seemingly (and sadly) it is not a very safe area to be at this time of the day evening, so the guys insisted on sitting in an ugly and loud place, because it was well lighted. Well, I guess you can’t have it all, but we still had a damn good time and conversations as entertaining as eye-opening, before we were driven back to Faria’s place – where we continued chatting until late about deep shit and stuff, ahem. 😉
About these (and also later) conversations I’ll just give away that apparently it is true that commonly Pakistanis (of all income groups) stay virgins until they marry. This was slightly surprising for me, I have to admit, because I had thought it to be just the official version of something still happening in secrecy, but I was wrong and I highly respect the honesty Pakistanis show for themselves regarding their religion / tradition / beliefs. They do have a point in arguing how, because of saving oneself for marriage, problems such as teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are not an issue in Pakistan, whereas in some so-called first world or highly developed countries they are. It’s not all black and white, guys!
InFamous Karachi 