Holidayyyy

A hot day in the office. Under an a/c that is exhaling warmth onto me..I am going crazy. If not for the fact that we have a holiday starting from tomorrow... I'd be at a level requiring professional help.

Hopefully, we will jam tomorrow and, hopefully the new guy for vocal tryout will be there.

On saturday night we will head for Cox's Bazaar.

Cheers

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Accident on the highway

[From sources]
Black was in an accident while coming back from Chittagong after performing for the Djuice promo.
Miraj and Tony are in a hospital here. Jon and Jahan are apparently in Chouddogram waiting for the release of Mobin bhai's corpse. The most fatal blow was his. As far as i know, Tahsan, Jon and Jahan are unharmed.

The funny thing is that GP had the rest of the performing artists (The indian idol bunch and Miles) flown in an airplane to Dhaka!

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I realize...

When i talk to rickshaw or taxi guys to give directions, i repeat words...
"Daine daine", "Baye baye", "Shoja shoja", "Astey astey", and when i get there .."Rakhen rakhen".

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SeinLanguage

I read a book by this name in my first year at university. I suddenly remembered this while throwing darts with friends since this book had an analogy of dartboards and.... nevermind. It was a funny book written by none other than Jerry Seinfeld. I managed to find a site which has excerpts from it.

Click

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In the mulk of the Moghs

I am sure everyone heard the expression "Mog-er mulluk!". Who or what were these Mogs? I only hazily remember being told that they were a tribe or society that was very unruly and unmanageable. Did they all live in 'Mog'bazaar?

Why am I blogging so much today? Mog-er mulluk naki? ;)

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Words n' Pages: India, Progress and Deceit

There is a new book shop in town and its all yellow. Its called Words n' Pages and is two-stories high. Has a lil' cafe upstairs, whose occupants may be seen from outside through the large window (the table of the cafe is by the window).

When i went in, i was surprised by how many books they had by Indian writers! Usually that will not be a surprise since Indian literature is very popular here. I am talking about children's books, comics, travel books, history books written in English. Later a friend who joined me there confirmed my hunch of the store being owned by Indians. Kudos to them for setting up a nice shop like that!

What really hooked me that night was the comic books they had - (DC, Marvel...) Superman, Justice League, Batman, Thundercats and more. Since i was very into these things during my school years, i got nostalgic and bought a bunch of them for my cousin Nil whose birthday was approaching. I was amazed to see that the penciling and drawings for these comics were done in India! So now DC has an office in Mumbai where the comics are made locally! The Indians have a lot to teach us which we overlook (possibly due to the weight of their other import - Bollywood), and this is also true for Malaysia. These two countries have made leaps in past decades and they have done so by gathering investment and building industries there. Anyway, it was also kinda funny to see an ad in one of the comics of an indian version of spiderman wearing a white pajama and nagra! Talk about localization!

I came home happy with my purchases that night. Also the experience of walking through shelves filled with books was kinda calming. I had bought about 10 comics that night and the prices were either taka 30 or 50 (thickness wise). This I thought was ok since most indian books sell here for double. But later I saw in fine print below the place where it was written 'Rs. 15', the letters:

'Bangladesh: Tk. 18'

!!! I felt very cheated. The one that cost taka 50 had 'Tk. 30' on it! Is this legal?

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Masters of Acoustic Guitar

I got this incredible album from cousin fokla a few days ago. The title is that of my post, and it has a compilation of a lot of guitar players playing acoustic guitars. I must admit when looking through the list I could only recognize Eric Johnson's name. But the last track I just heard really blew me away. I can tell the guitar was a 12-string acoustic. The player's name is Dan Ross, and I think I just found out what might be the possibilities with my 12-string! I should get new strings though to achieve what he did with the slapping technique!
Oh My Gawd (Janice-from-friends-style)!!!

PS. All you people out there, NEVER over-eat lunch!

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Anushey: Throaty and Husky voice?

In recent times some of the language in Daily Star and its offshoots are not settling well with me. E.g., the Star Weekend Magazine has a piece on Folk Music and the Fusion music that has come up surrounding it. There they have a picture of Anushey the vocalist of the very talented band simply named "Bangla". Below the picture the captions describe her voice as "Throaty and Husky"! Is that right? I don't really know what 'THROATY' sounds like, but HUSKY is definitely NOT for Anushey. It might suite the co-writer herself (Miss Elita) perfectly, but its just not imposable on Anushey.

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The New Guy

I was watching the movie The New Guy (again) last night and it occurred to me that the guy doing the main role could be perfect for 'Jughead' if ever The Archies were to be made into a movie!!!

Also i think the guy sometimes look like Tahsan. Yes, they have one thing in common.. they both have the goofy look. :)

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I realize...

- that the question I ask most in a day is "whats the date?" or "what day is it?"

- that the 'Star World' channel's worst programming is that for saturday!

- that the songs I dislike are the ones I am likely to be humming later! (current is Britney Oops Spears' 'Why don't you do something?')

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Revamped

my band website

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The Inverted Coma

'coma' not 'comma' ok? Just so you don't make the mistake I made. This is the band of my next door neighbor from Melaka (Malaysia). Bukit Beruang. He and I played once and he borrowed my amp a trillion times. A very talented musician. This is his band and hope the people out there will give them a try.

Website

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Word of the day: Panglossian

Panglossian
Extremely, and naively optimistic.

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Casa Greek

Went to a new restaurant last night, named Casa Greek (read: Greek home). Eating out was inevitable ..since there was no food at home.. and while on the way to somewhere else... we picked this place up.

Below are some photos. One even of the salaad we had. The main course could not be photographed because of the speed with which it was devoured! It was Fillet Mignon and rib steak.

It was a nice place, and the service the waiters offer are also very good. The only hiccup was the high prices. But who knows... this might be the closest we'll ever come to Greece :).

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Remains of the Crab Salaad (white) and Squid Salaad. 

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Bored and hungry, i got into the act too. Saif (with glasses) the vicitm of my lack of focus. 

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Tasting the Mirindaaah before we mixed it up with lime and tomato juice! 

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Hungry ones wait impatiently 

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"blah"

did anyone ever google for 'blah'
????

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April 8th Friday

In the morning me and Rubaiyath went to look for apartments in the Baridhara DOHS area. While doing so we were thinking of how it would be to have a reality show about bachelors looking for flats to rent. Have a bunch of bachelors, and a married couple go through one area by one and recording what goes on.

In the afternoon, during jummah prayers the imam was talking about the virtues of honest labor/work/earning. How we should have intergrity in the way we earn our living. He also touched the topic of moderation in our quest for wealth. He urged people to try and avoid earning too much in excess of what is sufficient for living. I wondered then how much of this teaching is actually registering between the ears! Dhaka while being the city of mosques does not have much to show for the virtues of its citizens. Even my parents would probably be surprised if I were to say to them that I think I have the kind of pay that is enough for me to survive this life and save enough for retirement. The truth is that ambition and ideas of a 'fine' lifestyle has been sold to us. Competing in society with your next door neighbor is now a 'neccessity'. Then comes the way to justify high earnings by spending towards helping the needy, the orphans/orphanages, helping the society with the money earned. That should be an incentive to earn more rather than an urge to have the most expensive watch or car!

At night I attended the wedding reception of one of the guys I knew from Malaysia. Its amazing how Xindian gets business! While some chinese restaurants have trouble filling .. say 10 tables... these guys fill up 4 floors quite often! And thats not all! The owners of Xindian apparently have restaurants all over Dhaka! Anyway, I donno why since the food was nothing exceptional!!! The place is fine... decorations were also not that extraordinary. I, in fact, hate the dim lightings of chinese restaurants!

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Misc.

VOA radio is now playing on 97.6 FM every morning (from what i heard between 9 am and 12). Its pretty nice since i got a phone now with a radio. This helps out sometimes during those long bus rides from one place in Dhaka to another and beyond.

Rubaiyath and I are pretty concerned about the lives we are leading. We slave away in our offices through long hours and the whole thing is now somehow engrained to our selves. I know for certain that now even if I do get a chance to get out at 5 pm, I feel weird about it! I just don't want to go out there, like a vampire scared of daylight. But sometimes, in the morning, I do feel like skipping work. I know once I am in, I will be right at home, and maybe thats the whole point of not wanting to go.

Meanwhile Rubaiyath, Mosha and their venture called Muzaq is now handling a marketing campaign of Advanced Development Technologies. He showed me two of the 10 second videos they produced. The concepts were very good... Nothing less would be expected from these friends of mine... such talent and genuis! so proud of you guys. But I must admit when Mosha first told me his ideas, i visualized it a bit differently. The animations were done by a 2nd year student of IBA! They are out there hunting out all the talent they can do meet their ends.

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o my gawd!

My friend is eating a 12 taka shingara! 12 taka veggie shingara!!!! O my gawd!

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Evolution of speech

Surely many of the parents of current 20 year olds had a hard time coping with words like 'cool' and 'phatt'. And now there is a new one on the block. It spells S I C K!
so say goodbye to: "Wow thats cool!" and say hello to "Man! thats sick!". No temperature and no pills... sick is now a good thing!

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A Brainwash Anyone?

Recently, I went to a discussion held by an organization named Liberated Youth. The discussion was on the present plight of youth, especially muslim youth. They made a claim in the beginning that the youth is the 'Critical Mass' of the population whereby they hold the power and intelligence to make wrongs right and bring about large changes socially, politically... etcetera ecetera.

When I told some of the guys about this discussion I have been to, and the fact that Liberated Youth happends to be a sub faction of another organization that is Islam conscious, many claimed that they often 'brainwash' people! I have only been to one of these discussions, which was followed by and Q & A afterwards, and from that experience I can say that they were pretty rational, keen on promoting youth to be rational, to do something once they have thought clearly of the action, its consequences and its implications!

This scare is pretty widespread these days. Anything related to religion is scary. The people who talk about religion is scary and the organizations that pursue this subject are almost always implicated as brainwashers.

What struck me as ironic is the fact that little discussion I went to that night, was accusing the general portion of the youth as being brainwashed (not is exactly these words) by the media. Especially the exported entertainment, the music, the movies and the portrayals they carry of the youth and what their lifestyles is like. I mean really, if you see the world over, the youth of asia now dress like the youth on MTV (including yours truly) or Friends. But this is also nothing new. My dad and his generation used to be into bell bottoms and Elvis. I see people discarding culture for trends. Maybe its inevitable, but do we really stop and think about it?

I did agree beforehand with the issues that were raised that day. I don't particularly think the way we dress and carry ourselves matter much. However, to see the majority of the youth unconcerned about the poverty, illiteracy and the regular chaos of the city does bother me! It is true, being hip, having a phat ride (a car with spoilers and custom exhaust pipes and what else have you ...U know what you see in NFS),  and whatnot...the 'bling bling' it has come to Dhaka, where exists palace like apartments surrounded by slums! Where are our heads these days!???

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Recently....

I am noticing a lot of people struggling with bicycles! As i recall, it used to be fairly easy to do! Is something causing people to lose their sense of balance :) ? Maybe they should first start with tricycles!

I am waking up early, I am falling asleep early! Punctuality, here I come!

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