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 Author

Read More

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. You are surprised by a stagnant stream of vehicles in both sides of the road. After many moments you slowly progress to your destination only to find that a road is blocked and the vehicles are diverted to another by-pass. You know now what the problem is but you can't escape from the jam. Then after more than a hour than your usual time you reach your office. You send your messenger to deposit certain document to the bank. Then you go out for a meeting 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time and arrive there sweating 30 minutes late. Luckily other participants are not as lucky as you are. So the meeting starts 1:15 hours late. You have a delayed lunch and that induces your acidity pains. You come back to office and find that your messenger has just returned without the work done after negotiating another traffic jam due to a rally of a political party. The bank has asked for more documents, which the customer service employee forgot to mention during the briefing the morning. You reach home in the evening after burning much fuel in the traffic jam only to find that the electricity has gone out. You are not fortunate to have generator at your home. You decide to go out to a shopping mall but negotiate another traffic jam. You reach there at 9:30 and find that the shop you wanted to go is closed. You come back home and find that that the electricity has gone out again.

It seems many crisis and disasters have hit Bangladesh. The recent factory collapse in Dhaka has blocked an important inter-section in Dhaka causing the traffic system to go haywire. And the traffic lights in many parts are not working because of electricity load shedding making the situation worse. The exasperating police are trying to keep the traffic under control.

The ongoing power shortage is persisting without any improvement which are also leading to water problems as pumps are being shut most of the times.

I am surprised that people are coping up with all these as if these are normal circumstances. All our political parties takes the streets for unimportant things, but they are not doing anything to make a change by reducing the problems. The government says they have fund shortage to overcome the power crisis, however they have enough budget to purchase fighter planes. But who is to question that? Who will protest and demand the basic rights? Who will try to make a change?

Read More

POWER CRISIS

A 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 creating for the Dhakaites but they surely are not happy about it.

Elsewhere in the country power crisis has deepened and the farmers are also furious about it.

But absence of electricity did not stop students of Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (RUET) watching the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka cricket match as they had used uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) as a power source, about 30 of them for the whole match. It may be noted here that the UPS is commonly used in Bangladesh for PCs to backup files and shutting down the PC on the event of a power failure.

Read More

SWEET VICTORY

I 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 query.

Read More

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 business.

Read More

RELOCATION PART I: THE NEWS

I 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 before you relocate to another place for a longer time. Besides arranging flights (and then reschedule it), there are local bank accounts and credit cards to be closed; certificates to be collected and kept ready and the toughest part of it is to attend invitations by the nearest and dearest. All of a sudden you have another schedule book to manage invitations and you have someday when you have three invitations from breakfast to dinner in three different places. Like it or not this is part of the hospitable culture you possess and the custom is not to decline it claiming that your stomach is upset because the host will miss treating you for a long time. I did not know that we were that popular!

We will be living on our own for the first time as we have stayed with my parents after our marriage for five long years. There are some typical frustrations for a wife in joint family (although she was happy living with my parents) and the yearning to live separately. So she especially is looking forward to it. I and my wife had to purchase and ship loads of household goods and clothes at least a month early. I am amazed by her thoughts of the little details like how our dining table will be decorated.

These past months were so eventful and we are experiencing one important transitional phase in our lives.

Related:
RELOCATION PART II: THE BACKGROUND
RELOCATION PART III: WHY GERMANY
RELOCATION PART IV: THE SACRIFICE
RELOCATION PART V: THE CHALLENGE

Read More

RELOCATION PART II: THE BACKGROUND

I 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 is a career diplomat and is going to her first posting in a mission in a foreign land. In her tenure of several years in the Bangladesh foreign office she got a couple of chances to avail job related scholarships in countries like UK and USA. But she had declined on the ground that she would have to live a long year separated from me and her mother. Soon after Rianna was born, she even declined to attend a UN seminar in USA for a period of seven days because she thought she will have opportunities later but her daughter needed her most at that time. Yes this is my wife, a typical Bangladeshi woman, to whom the family is the top priority than her lucrative career. I am terming the job ‘lucrative’ not because of the honor, foreign tours and the diplomatic privileges it entails. But because if you know about Bangladesh civil service then you know how much competition one has to face, how much talented one has to be to score enough to be at the top. And only the top seeds can avail the much coveted ‘foreign service’. This is one service in Bangladesh where without being corrupt one can live a higher standard of life with status. And considering all of these small family problems become immaterial.

She joined the service after our marriage and before that we made a promise that whatever happens, we will not live separated. And now we need to be together more because of our 17 month old girl. So this is the big moment and we have decided to move.

And one thing pleases me most is that the diplomatic missions in a foreign land are considered extension of the soil of the land. If our kid was born in Germany, it would be considered as Bangladeshi. And we are destined to come back to the homeland one day.

Related:
RELOCATION PART I: THE NEWS
<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>
RELOCATION PART III: WHY GERMANY
RELOCATION PART IV: THE SACRIFICE
RELOCATION PART V: THE CHALLENGE

Read More