The downside to living in a surreal construct like Street 4 is that everyone knows everyone and everyone knows everybody else’s business. MD went to work yesterday and one of his colleages, Mjr Jordan told him that his wife had seen Mjr Dazzles down at the fabric shops on Saturday and wanted to know if the blonde lady he was with was Mrs MD. Mjr Jordan informed his wife that Mjr Dazzles was not married and the wife responded with “I knew it! I knew she must be his mistress! He was far too attentive towards her for her to be his wife! He walked around the store BEHIND her and I even saw him carry her parcels to the car!” 🙂 So we managed to sneak out and escape the detection of the elite Pakistani Army security teams, but nothing can evade the Street 4 sewing circle! Mjr Jordan’s wife and her crack squad have eyes and ears everywhere!
Spurred on by our success, we decided to try a variant on a theme and go for Plan B… the Great Stadium Escape. Now you’d think a security lock down is a solid thing yeah? But the little guys at the guard post didnt bat an eyelid when we told them we were going to the stadium so off we trotted to town again.
Firstly went to the PIA office to try and get a refund on the second ticket that we were forced to buy in Islamabad when they couldnt find my e-booking. They could find the booking in their archaic little system, but the chickie who was trying to help us had to keep escalating and escalating the problem until she came back and told us that we had to take it back to the PIA office in Islamabad for a refund. Nothing works here…. absolutely nothing. Sigh…. I miss Qantas.
After that we went back to the fabric store to find some embroidery stuffs and have a further hunt through the materials. I had to restrain myself as I am now well and truly over my baggage limit I think… especially when you include the weight of the carpet I bought yesterday (cringe). I couldn’t resist!!! It was the hand knotted Persian rug from Esfahan in central Iran that I saw there last week. I positively hate bargaining but I think did pretty good on the price in the end. It was well down from the 180,000Rps that MD was originally quoted when he first saw this rug a couple of weeks ago. And it will go lovely with my house 🙂 But needless to say I didnt go spare in the fabric shop again – as much as I wanted to!
After shopping we did actually go to the stadium for a handball game. Because Australians are known for their sporting prowess, MD is highly sought after for any team sport events they might be running…. even rubbish like handball that he’s never played before in his life! I watched a bit of the game, but couldnt figure out the rules and found all the yelling in Urdu to be a little offputting – the sound like they’re going to start fighting any minute! So I went for a walk up along the ridge behind the stadium to take some photos of the mountains that surround Quetta. Forgot about the whole altitude thing here, and a very short walk up a rather low ridge damn near killed me! The late afternoon light was doing cool and strange things so I got some wild and weird photos which was cool. I found out later there is usually snipers in position around the ridge to stop Afghans taking pot shots at them while they are using the stadium… but I didnt see anyone up there. :S
When I came back down, I went for a wander down towards the road, and got roused at for being out of eyesight of the secuity guard… apparently I am not allowed out of the stadium to watch the traffic. I was hoping to get some photos of those jiggle trucks or perhaps some pics of the family of 4 or 5 riding around all on one little 75cc motorbike… but so much for that. 😐 The security guy, Ashgwar, who was posted to the gate of the stadium all day regardless of whether anyone was using the place, was nice to me though. I thought he was just practicing his English but kyboshed that concept when he asked me for my mobile phone number?!?!
After handball we headed back… and this time we got quizzed by the guards about the swimming pool/stadium excuse probalby because we’d been out foe night on six hours. I think they’re on to us! 🙂 Back to Street 4 for another of Shahid’s excellent curries and then MD and I settled onto the couch with some movies before turning in early.
Still having lots of trouble getting any decent sleep here though :S