ON THE JOURNEY

I am writing from Bangkok Airport. I started the journey with a hiccup. My cousin drove me to Airport. On the way the car charge indicator was flashing. So we stopped at a repair shop to fix the dynamo belt. We have lost 40 minutes but arrived at the Dhaka Airport before 1:30 hours before departure. The Thai flight was really smooth as silk. The type of service they boast of. It was punctual and the 2 hours journey ended in no time.




My Flight.

My neighbor in the flight was a gang of Sri Lankan under 14 Football players who were returning to their home country after competing in a tournament in Bangladesh. The boys looked pretty much tired when the flight started. But they got cheered up after their lunch. They were cajoling in Sinhalese with boyish behaviors. They were lively companions. I had a talk with one of them. They have enjoyed their stay in Bangladesh but are disappointed with their losses in 3 turnouts.



The Sri Lankan under 14 football team

I searched the whole Bangkok Airport for prepaid mobile SIM. Its not available inside the Airport. I bought an international calling card instead to call home.

Now I have to wait a couple of hours more for the flight to Sri Lanka. I have nothing to do except window-shopping. The internet is quite expensive here for me, Baht 75 ($2) for 15 minutes. Outside its only 1 Baht per minute. So staying online won�t be a good choice.

Signing off.

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Off to Sri Lanka

I am traveling to Sri Lanka to attend a conference. The itinerary promises pleasure alongwith business. There will be plenty of site seeing including a trip to an Elephant sanctuary. I wish I could take my wife with me. I will miss her.

Blogging will be intermittent or even non existent next week depending on the availability of internet facilities. But I am planning to be back with travelogues and pictures. So keep your fingers crossed.

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Blogging in Bangla!

B¢j h¡Pm¡ Lb¡ h¢m

Meet Debashish & Sukanya, who have really done a revolutionary work by starting blogging in bangla. In their Bangla blog, they have showed the step by step help on "how to start a bangla blog".

The main tweaking you have to do:
1) In your browser's encoding set the View-> Encoding to UTF-8.
2) Change the meta settings in your template
3) Install any of the Unicode compliant fonts (Likhan, Ani, Akaash & Sagar)
4) After you have installed the fonts, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Fonts in Internet Explorer. Choose any of the Bangla fonts.
5) Get latest version of usp10.dll file (uniscribe processor) and copy it to windows system.
6) You have to instal an editor which converts Bangla fonts to unicode and you have to paste it in your blog post.
7) You should have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher on your machine.

Happy blogging in Bangla. And don't forget to add it to the Bangla Blog directory.

Well I am doing some experiment on the above and my effort looks like this, which does not look promising. I am facing problem in transforming bangla text from editor to unicode 8 which is not at all convenient. I hope I can get the hang of it soon.

I have to thank Debashish & Sukanya for their great effort and achieving this breakthrough. Keep it up mates.

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April 2004 - turbulent time in Bangladesh

TIME magazine publishes an article on the current state of disgrace of Bangladesh. Although the report is a bit too critic, it rightly says:

Bangladesh's drift toward mayhem threatens to undo several decades of solid progress made by one of the world's poorest countries. Foreign direct investment in Bangladesh fell from $280 million in 2000 to $45 million in 2002..

The law and order situation has turned really bad. Many businessmen have already been targeted for kidnappings & murders by extortionists. The worse was the murder and mutilation of bodies of a businessman & his son in Dhaka. The bodies were dismembered in 149 pieces. However, Dhaka police commissioner Huda insists "there is no crisis."

The main reason of the lawlessness is that there is a nexus of corruption, politics and violence. The politicians are sponsoring gangs of armed youths in order to intimidate their opponents. These hooligans were bailed out of their imprisonment for their past crimes are used to work as extortionists, sometimes to collect cash for their political patrons, sometimes simply to make money for themselves. The mostly corrupt police department do not take the pain to work independently in fear of loosing their job and are quite happy to do as the ruling party leaders tell.

Another reason for this mayhem is that the political acrimony. The rivalry between the ruling party BNP & the opposition Awami League is so personal in nature that the nation is caught awkwardly in between. The opposition is demanding early elections and taking the streets to pressurize govt. to step down within 30th of April (which is unconstitutional and a farce). It seems the opposition leaders are losing their heads not capitalizing on the shortcomings of the present govt. but running an agenda which won't be endorsed by the common people let alone the international community. The ruling party is challenging the opposition threat and are applying pressure to opposition party activists by arrests and police actions. It is going to be a turbulent month in Bangladesh with many hartals (strikes) and violence.

In this PEPSI or COKE situation think that the general people know that:

If they [the BNP and the AL] fail to control lawlessness, then Islamists can present themselves as the only real alternative. Another likelihood is that the situation would transgress to a military rule.

Is there a hint of hope? TIME reports:

Sari seller Siraj, like many other Bangladeshis, says he is adamantly opposed to the fundamentalists because he finds their brand of Islam too extreme. "I am a Muslim, but they are my enemies," he says. As he sees it, the government and the opposition must wake up to the impending crisis before it is exploited by Islamic radicals or by the military: "Corruption and violence have to end. Both political parties have to understand this, or there is no future for our children."

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Kal Baishakhi

After almost three months of dry weather, yesterday Dhaka was hit by the first Kal Baishakhi (Summer Storm) of this season. I was out in the street, driving, when suddenly gusty wind and rain blocked all view. I could here the hails dropping in heavily leaving everyone in a panic situation. However I could find a shelter soon enough to drop the heartbeats which were racing like a horse. The rain that followed the storm was very pleasant to watch & feel. But the hailstorm shook the city. It was not that strong but enough to snap the power & telephone lines, toppled a few antennas & tree branches and the rain waters flooded the streets soon enough for a brief period.

But all this had made the weather very pleasant after a couple of hot & humid days. This reminds me of the quote:

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

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The university 'market' in UK

Yes it is a market as it attracts about 175,000 overseas, fee-paying students in Britain. They are worth about GBP 1bn in fee income to universities and contribute about GBP 8bn to the UK economy.

I was wondering how many of the overseas students go back to do something for their own country.

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HOW AN AWARENESS CAMPAIGN SAVES MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

According to this report, import of full cream powdered milk declined by 20 percent over the last 14 years in Bangladesh, mainly due to the success of breast-feeding campaign in the country. Bangladesh has a shortage of production of fresh milk in the country. The import of powdered milk has dropped by $15 million dollars from 1989 due to success of the campaign lead by the Bangladesh Breast-feeding Foundation (BBF). The organization says that the achievement is more than the amount of money, if the population in the two years -- 110 million in 1989 and 130 million in 2003 -- is taken into consideration.

Researchers found breast milk to be the best diet for infants and children up to two years, when the base of physical and mental development including intelligence of the children takes place. But the campaign is hampered by aggressive marketing of foreign powdered milk and baby food companies, which try to persuade the mothers, even pediatrician, to give their product items to the children as a replacement of breast-milk.

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