Umar and I visited my friends Haider Ali and Ali Salman Anchan of Phool Patti. They had just returned from a trip to the Pakistani High Commission in India, where they had painted some walls in their truck art style.We caught up, then head to the train station to book their return tickets to Karachi. From there we grabbed some lunch at a little dhaba, before heading to Olomopolo, an interesting open arts space where they had a meeting scheduled.I walked over to visit Sohail sahib at Checkpost and the rest of the group went their separate ways. It was a bit of a walk to get to Checkpost, but I felt like just walking. After my experiences with production people here, I really wanted to just get back home and move on with the next stage of things. After all I have been through to accomplish whatever I have for “Risalo” so far, I just wanted to get back home. I had gone over some more details for the last river background with Umar that morning. I planned to be out of town for the next week. That is a bit risky as the work may not get done, but so be it, I don’t want to sit around here waiting another week, just trying to bide my time.It was good to catch up with Sohail sahib. I shared the reasons for my decision to go home and not shoot “Risalo” in Pakistan. The director of “Manto” dropped by to see some progress on a project he was working on. I felt very fortunate to get a chance to sit in on the session and see some previews of a very lavish production that he has been working on. It makes me feel good to see projects that are raising production standards here.We had some coffee cake, courtesy of Hamza Imam who recently became a father. Hopefully I can stop in again before I leave, but I certainly appreciate all the friends at Checkpost, who let me use their resources for weeks on end to digitize DV tapes for the music portion of “Risalo”. Sohail introduced me as being someone of some significance in relation to my work, but I feel quite the opposite. I look at the work around me and see funded projects with entire crews, and on one side I see myself, quite battered by the experience of trying to make this film. What I am trying to make is certainly an oddity. I don’t see something like “Risalo” being made at any point if I don’t do it. That does not necessarily mean anything of any significance, it just is. Sometimes you just make stuff, because that’s the stuff you want to watch, and whatever with all other considerations.I took the usual long walk to the metro, followed by a bumpy ride home via bus and qing qi. I have a few lectures lined up in different cities for next week. I might as well do something useful before I leave. That should pretty much take me through to the date of my flight. I am tired of waiting and thinking, so hopefully this will help.