What is on your mind?

Umar, family, work, work, work!!

If you had to make an apology, what would it be for and for whom?

For being lazy… to everyone I work with.

Where’s the best place to be?

Home with Umar and crabbing with friends.

Pop music is rapidly taking over the Pakistani music scene, despite the moral brigade and diktats of the clergy. “Pop, along with soft rock, is growing in popularity. It has developed in a very short span of time and shows more promise than even Indian pop music,” claims Saadia, 19, a student of business studies. Most of the songs are in Urdu set to western music. There is a lot of talent coming here. Music experts say there are about 15 established music bands and a dozen pop music stars in Pakistan today.

A far cry, all agree, from the early 1980s, when during President Zia-ul-Haq’s regime, listening to or creating pop music was aggressively discouraged. However, after the Music ‘89 show, aired on the government-owned Pakistan Television (PTV), who was also the official sponsors, things appeared to change. At the show, 30-somethings danced to the music of the then pop idols - Nazia and Zoheb Hassan, Ali Azmat and bands like the Vital Signs.

THE Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has stepped in at the last minute to allow a pipe band to play at tomorrow’s record-breaking piping attempt in Holyrood Park.

President Musharraf’s personal involvement came about when he learned that Patiala Pipe Band of Pakistan couldn’t afford to travel to Edinburgh’s Pipefest 2005.

The head of state said the trip was important for international relations and personally organised 31 flight tickets for the band, who touched down in Edinburgh yesterday.

Pipefest 2005, which is being held in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care Scotland, will take place in the playing fields behind the Palace of Holyroodhouse with more than 8000 pipers from around the world expected.

When Geo TV, a thrusting new channel, ran a teaser campaign this year declaring that “George” was coming to Pakistan, the Islamabad government might have worried.

Why did the Americans not tell them their president was visiting? Was Air Force One circling overhead? Should President Musharraf pull a fresh al-Qaida arrest from his hat?

But there was no reason to worry. Instead of the anti-terror Texan, viewers found George Fulton, a burly and amiable Englishman who became a national celebrity as the star of George ka Pakistan (George’s Pakistan), the nation’s first reality TV show.

A military leader is how the world views General Pervez Musharraf. But it is his taste for modern art that has begun to open up minds as well as drawing rooms in Pakistan.

In Delhi after a five-day camp at Agra — the city where Musharraf attended the failed summit with Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2001 — to celebrate 350 years of the Taj Mahal, young artists from Pakistan acknowledged his contribution to making modern art commercially viable, particularly in conservative Lahore.

The marriage of former Pakistan cricket star Imran Khan and UK socialite Jemima Goldsmith has ended.

Former Pakistan captain Imran Khan has officially separated from his wife Jemima after nine years of marriage, according to Imran’s family.

Jemima (aka Haiqa), who is the daughter of the late British millionaire Sir James Goldsmith, has two boys by Imran.

“Imran and Jemima have ended their marriage,” an official of the cricket hero-turned-politician’s Pakistan Tehreek-i- Insaaf party confirmed to Press Times of India.

The statement released by the Pakistani political party is the climax of events that have taken place over the past few months.