QUOTE OF THE DAY"Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will --whatever we may think."- Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), British Aut...
February 26, 2006
WHATS HAPPENING IN BANGLADESH?If you live in Dhaka then you know how living conditions have deteriorated now a days. You wake up sweating because the electricity has gone off again. You go to freshen up and find there is no water in the tap. Your family members are quite clever to reserve some water so you are lucky this time. You go out for work and find some rickshawala cursing at you because your car has blocked him in a lane narrowed by digging for some pipeline deploying. You keep your head cool ignoring that and scratch to the main road....
February 23, 2006
POWER CRISISA severe power crisis has hit the Dhaka town. Each day, especially at night electric supply goes off for many hours. The power goes off not at a stretch, but in approximately one hour intervals and rotating in areas. The Electric supply authority calls it load shedding as they have to manage insufficient supplies of Electric and a bigger demand. According to this news this crisis was expected and lack of funds, lengthy procedures and bureaucratic tangle are the usual causes cited. I will not go into details about what problems it is...
February 22, 2006
SWEET VICTORYI was following the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka one-dayer via internet and as soon as soon as Sri Lanka was restricted to 212 in 49 overs, I knew we had a chance. The batsmen played sensibly and the blitzkrieg innings by Aftab Ahmed (32 in 22 balls) in the end made the target look very easy. So another win for Bangladesh cricket team by 4 wickets, first against Sri Lanka. Bangladesh needed it because there is no survival without victory.I hope this answers Ponting's recent que...
TODAY'S LINKS* Ekushe February- International Mother Language Day.* The great chinese blogger story.* The South Asia Diary.* Incredible things happen in America.* The South Asia Free Trade Agreement – SAFTA: Is key regional trade initiative an empty shell?* Why I published those cartoons?* You’re Muslim, you must be a terrorist then!* There are more luxury cars in the Pakistan Army than tanks.* The blogging busine...
RELOCATION PART I: THE NEWSI guess those who follow my blog regularly have noticed that I am not updating regularly. I have been under a lot of stress in the past couple of months. All efforts are culminating to one point. Yes, I am relocating shortly to a European country for approx three years.Many things happened in between. After disclosing that I am departing in short notice my employer panicked and hastily arranged a replacement. I had a dreadful time training my replacement and transferring my responsibilities. There are many checklists...
RELOCATION PART II: THE BACKGROUNDI myself have never tried to have an education in a foreign country or applied for a foreign job or immigration. I have never even applied for DV lottery as many of my friends did. I don’t have the fascination to live in a foreign place for a longer period. May be, because, I had the opportunity to travel to a number of countries. To me, living in my home country and living among the keens are among the top priorities. But this time my wife got into the act of putting me off the country for a longer period. She...
RELOCATION PART III: WHY GERMANY?Those who know me better know about my living in Germany (then West) in my teens. My father was a journalist of the state radio and worked in Deutsche Welle Bengali service for a couple of years during the mid eighties. I went to a German school for about a year and was exposed to the Western values and lifestyles and continued to keep in touch with Germany via the Goethe Institut, Dhaka after coming back to Bangladesh. My friends often mocked about my learning German year after year but never trying to go back...
RELOCATION PART IV: THE SACRIFICE Staying together is not easy for the careerist husband and wife. My wife had never stayed anyplace alone in her life (neither did I). So the thoughts of living in separate countries because of the job never came.But it was tough for me to resign from this settled job in a multinational in Bangladesh, with a compensation package of over $10k pa, which is considered more than enough to lead a decent life in Bangladeshi standard.Moreover you have certain responsibilities to you ageing parents, to look them after,...
RELOCATION PART V: THE CHALLENGEIn my 11 years of working experience I have secured a good position with an upward curve in career graph. But somewhere I always felt that this career line does not suit me. I have all kinds of creative hobbies but at work I could not find much creativity in all these business plans, budget graphs, presentations, compliance, deadlines etc. Suddenly you find yourself molded in a corporate structure with little explanations of why you are doing certain exercises. So on the basis of this apprehension I have taken the...
February 20, 2006
QUOTE OF THE DAY"To classify Bangladeshis, for example, only as Muslims and overlook their Bangladeshi identity is seriously misleading. To drown all that into a vision of 'you are just a Muslim - please be moderate and likeable and replace all those extremist imams with moderate and likeable ones', that is simply wrong-headed."- Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in an interview published in the Guard...
February 19, 2006
THE CARTOON ROWThank you Mr. Roberto Calderoli, the Italian reform minister, for your expression of free speech which has lead to at least 10 deaths in Libya. I hope your arrogance is a bit dented by this loss or heightened with the notion that "Yeah.. we have nailed another 10".Martin Jacques wrote in the Guardian:Europe has never had to worry too much about context or effect because for around 200 years it dominated and colonised most of the world. Such was Europe's omnipotence that it never needed to take into account the sensibilities, beliefs...
TOXIC LINER BANIts commendable that Bangladesh Government has banned the SS Norway, an asbestos-lined French ocean-liner, from being broken up in its ship-breaking yards. (BBC News) The Indian government banned the ocean-liner earlier. However the Bangladesh ship-breaking industry still risks lives of 45000 workers from frequent accidents in terrible work environment.Read this interesting Greenpeace article "Clemenceau… The ship that died but didn’t stop killing" to get an insight into the fate of end-of-life ships from the First World and why...
PONTING'S QUERYJust prior to the Australia cricket team's Bangladesh tour, Aussy captain Ricky Ponting questions the test status of Bangladesh. This was a bit of surprise as Cricket Australia had always backed Bangladesh.Perhaps he is not aware of the recent developments in Bangladesh Cricket. Bangladesh has been impressive in age-level tournaments. I am looking forward to see how soon Bangladesh cricket team changes the above image. Will the seniors be able to replicate the juniors' success in the current home series against Sri Lan...
February 14, 2006
THE FOOD MEMESukanya has tagged me for a food meme. Here are a list of my favorite foods (in no particular preferential order):1. Daal-Bhat: The staple food of the Bengalis are plain rice and a curry of pulse called daal. These two inexpensive dishes are very common in the daily cuisine of rich poor alike. There are many ways to cook daal and there are many varieties of daal. But I particularly like Moshur daal that is cooked in my home with small potion of turmeric (some like it more) and in many instances, especially when I am hungry I find that...
WHERE DID MY SPRING GO?This year spring came unnoticed in my life. Probably because of the freaking weather as winter has vanished a couple of weeks ago. I could only realize that yesterday was the 1st of Falgun (beginning of the spring) after seeing women clad in yellow in the streets. There is a tradition in Bangladesh that womens wear yellow on that day. Not everybody follows it but you can easily notice the dominant presence of yellow amongst...
February 12, 2006
FROM DEMOCRACY TOWARDS DESPOTISMTasneem Khalil, journalist-cum-blogger writes a wonderful article called "From Kansat to Paltan". The article deals with brutal suppression of public protests and intolerant handling of opposition agitation by the ruling government. He also criticized the opposition for ignoring the grass-root level problems like Kansat tragedy and indulging into soap opera of political showdow...
PROTEST ON FRIDAYSHave you ever wondered why the Islamic parties in Bangladesh arrange their protests usually after Jum'a prayers in Friday? Well, you will be able to guess after I tell you about my recent experience.Last Friday I went to Kataban 'Masjid Mission' mosque to pray. In the khutba (sermon) the Imam tried to give all kinds of logics to establish that the Shia practices of mourning for Hossain & Hassan is not Islamic. No doubt we can understand the reason behind some recent Muslim sectarian feuds & violences in Pakistan.Then came...
CORRUPTION OF THE MINDIn this sinful world we have to bear the news of a lot of vicious crimes. Those unbelievable headlines, those cinematic descriptions of crimes, unbearable pictures of the dead; how do they affect us? People often relish grazing the juicy details of a murder giving in to conspiracy theories floating around them. Some become outraged, some shrugs them off.But do we ever try to understand that these crimes are the anomalies in the society resulting from some other problems. Do we want to understand the background of these crimes?...
February 09, 2006
THE BRITISH CONNECTIONLast September David Montero of The Christian Science Monitor had written an interesting article titled "How extremism came to Bangladesh". He opined:"The accused Jaamyat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) is active since 1998 and have grown to 10,000 trained full-time operatives, and 100,000 part-time activists, funded with a payroll of more than $10,000 a month (hefty amount in Bangladeshi standard) with the aim of funding an Islamic state. Now wherefrom are the money coming? The trail traces back to Saudi Arabia, South Africa,...
February 08, 2006
February 07, 2006
BLOGOSPHERE GROWTHDavid Sifry has updated the latest state of the Blogosphere as measured by Technorati. His numbers on Blogosphere growth in summary:* Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months* It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago* On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day* 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created* Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati...
RESPECT AND TOLERANCE
Everybody is doing the Cartoon post now a days so I decided to chip in with my 2 cents. For a sensible analysis of the Danish Cartoon controversy please read this post in 'Pickled Politics' and the South Asian bloggers reactions in the Global Voices Online.The main debate has now turned to the issue of defining "freedom of expression". Wikipedia defines: Free speech is not a simple and absolute concept but a liberty that is justified by even deeper values. And wherefrom these values originate? From respecting other human beings and their cultures,...
February 05, 2006
BANGLADESH BLOG BUZZ(Cross-posted in the Global Voices Online)The latest happenings in Bangladeshi blogs around the world:1) Celebration: Sanjoy posts some beautiful photos of Swarashwathi (The Goddess of knowledge) Puja 2006 and wonders which one comes first : money or knowledge ?2) Meet: The first ever Bangladeshi Bloggers Meet took place in Dhaka last Saturday, 4th of February 2006. Around twenty bloggers gathered share their thoughts and know each other in the Rock star cum blogger Maqsood’s house. "The third world view" and "Rajputro" have...
February 04, 2006
THE FIRST DHAKA BLOGGERS MEETThe first Dhaka bloggers meet kicked of in style as about 20 bloggers gathered in Maqsood Bhai’s house in Niketon in the afternoon on the 4th of February, 2006. The atmosphere were great, the participants were well knowledgeable and free and frank and Maqsood Bhai’s hospitability was superb. We even had talented bloggers like Misho, who is joining Microsoft, USA shortly. The bloggers who attended were:Shafi, Khaled, Zico,...
February 01, 2006
ROCKING JIHADThis is really disturbing. Probe News Magazine writes an investigative report on the multi million Taka Bangladeshi Industry of "Islamist music". (via Tasneem Khalil & Salam)It is surprising that jihadi music are being sold in the market unnoticedly along with the Bangla traditional songs, modern westernised band and concert music in the market. According to this report these Islamic-based songs definitely have found a niche in the music mart. So what do these songs instigate or inspire? Probe magazine dissected 300 songs and found:"Most...
TODAY'S LINKS* Do you want to be a prostitute?* The thumb thing: Must have for the book lovers.* Google map hacks.* An observation on current state of 'India Internet'.* US plans to 'fight the net' revealed.* Pork soup becomes political in France.* On being authentically South Asian.* That other holocaust.* Bangladeshi journalists injured in "attack" on London offic...
UPDATE ON DHAKA BLOGGERS MEETI am delighted to let you know that Maqsood Bhai has generously offered his residence in Niketon, Gulshan to host the first ever Dhaka bloggers meet on the 4th of February, Saturday. What could be a better place? Most of you know Maqsood Bhai as the rock legend of Bangladesh (Feedback,Dhaka bands). As a person he is a wonderful companion and a great motivator. Don't miss the chance to meet the legend (also a blogger) in person. He also suggested arranging some music (if time permits).I think we can the start the Adda...
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