tick tock tick

I am a headless chicken today.

Even tho i don't know where my head is at a moment, i know exactly where it has been afterwards. The destinations today are the bank, the endorsement of my money... the currency transfers, the flight bookings, shopping for warm swedish-weather-friendly clothes, contacting the university, and the sheer tightness of the deadline, dead being the keyword... in two days i shall prepare and leave for another country, or not. Oh.. i didnt need to be so dramatic... i'll just catch the classes late.

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Chittagong.

Aah. Life. For the past few days it has been a surplus of sleep, food and tv. Almost made up for the weeks and weeks passed in shortage or lack of these luxuries if I may call it that. Also,I hve been away from the internet! Today we refilled our home internet (its a prepaid arrangement).

Anyway, seems like i have next to nothing to say.. so... here goes... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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ki tamsha!

Office-ay boshey boshey shuntesi dhakar nanan jaigay boma futsey!

Ei dikey bishal ek party, bhai, bon, khalato bhaiyera, amar notun bhabi, ebong tahar attiyora shobai gese Fantasy Kingdom!

tarpor dosto rony tv deikha news janailo je locations gula hoitese...
High Court area
Uttora
Airport Road
Farmgate
etc...
and 35 other districts! including Chittagong!

Korlam shathey shathey Amma're phone. School early chooti diya disey! lakh shukur khodarey.. ekhon doa kori je khoda abar shob thik korey dik... karon according to BBC, this is the work of a small group 'mujahideen whatnot'. phfffff.

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Mother-In-Law

By way of HTCURRY of Amadergaan who got it by way of the internet (usually now means www.google.com :p ):

"Have you ever noticed that if you rearranged the letters in "mother in law", they come out to Woman Hitler?"

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Alls well that ends well.

'Disgusted' is probably the word to describe how i'd rate my mood today. The day has been full of powercuts today, and thus going on and off work, or adda (chatting, tradiotionally person to person by mouth, not using computers or 'Instant Messengers'). In the end i could not stand either. I found some solace in the music i brought with me... listening to Collective Soul's The World I Know now. Blasted Agontuk-3 a while back. Thank you Sumon Bhai for the kickass song there, and Shishir for being such a brilliant guitarist! Talent personified!

Since the awful back pain has subsided, I am wondering whether to take the X-rays to the doctor... I hate that race of people.. mostly anyway. Since I might join my newly wed 'daktar' (~ doctor) cousin and his wife for dinner.... maybe I can pull out the massive x-ray at the dinner table and have him give me an analysis. What should i do till dinner tho anyway? Will Collective Soul be able to keep me calm till then? Home seems very far away, but there I could shut off the world behind closed eyelids in sleep. How enticing!

I do hope this days ends well.

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Cheap Thrill

That would be the name of our lil group. the merry men of rock... who gather every saturday in a corner of Dilu Road for four hours of jamming. I started playing a lil two chord riff that Raziq liked a lot. I told him this won't make a good song... its too 'cheap' ... its 'cheap thrill' these kind of things. He started laughing at the idea of it... and i kept thinking that would be a nice name for this group... CHEAP THRILL. Then we won't have to try too hard and come up with all the cheap thrills our instruments will allow us to muster.

Last night we went jamming again. As so happened Raziq has written a whole lyric for the cheap piece and it includes the phrase 'shosta shiharoney' at one point! Anyways, i told the guys we should really prepare 'Cheap Thrill' and 'Ei Prothom' such that we can record them in a short time before we started our thing. And it just so happened that we screwed up the most that night. It started picking up later tho. My brother and sister also came by later to watch. Cheap Thrill took a pretty good form by the end of our two hour session. We were one hour late and we got out one hour early.. that is how dedicated we are!

Anyway, as of now... i am sitting in my office with a back ache ... feel like a horse stamped on my back for a while and left it in million pieces! I discovered the ache last night when I got home... I couldn't even lay on my back! And since morning every gulp of water is creating an ache on the top right of my back. ouch. its too much. Wait till i cough or sneeze... uff, that hurts the most!

Update from 5/6 years later: The band is called Rhee, and the song Cheap Thrill was released in a compilation titled Rock 505, which came out together with Rock 404. Between the two CDs there were lots of new bands releasing their first or second single, as well as the older bands like Black, Arbovirus, Cryptic Fate and X-Factor.

Get Band email for free at ReverbNation.com

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I forgot

...what i was going to blog about! later....

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Human cost behind bargain shopping

News

via The 3rd World View

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Confusion

Confusion is my middle name. Or was it my last?

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breaking news!

I was at the office on time! whts the big deal tho! :p

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Visual Rebels

The guys from the Creative Multimedia faculty in my ol university seems to be in full gear. First saw an ad one of them did for Suzuki in Malaysia! Then i got linked to this:

Visual Rebels

It is awesome to see that such a good mix of talents are moving on together to form a company of their own. Wish them all the best in finding a good position for themselves in the market, which often just does not appreciate these talents at all.

Sample:

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A Series of Events....

I donno why i like the name 'Count Olaf' so much! So much that i logged onto msn with that name!
:) And i forgot to clear the 'Still Got the Blues' tag from the personal message section of the messenger. Imran wasted no time in pointing out that count olaf would probably never be 'blue', that it was a contradiction i had up there. I tried to convince him that Count Olaf despite his wicked ways was a person, with a heart and all... deep inside craves to be loved.... crap!
Amit recognized me instantly ... like it was just like me to have some weird name for my msn title... he didnt even know who Count Olaf was! I tried explaining it to him...
"Count Olaf is a splendid man, a master of disguise ...rotten to the core.... knows what he wants and is ruthless in his efforts to get it, gives no way to compassion and other bullshit like that... we should all be so like him..."

A Series of Unfortunate Events
...and more
...and even more!

Among other things, i was advising sajid to not go for his MBA straight away! So many people do that and end up just working with colleagues who just have a bachelors degree! Without work experience what good is a masters degree!? I suggested www.jobsa1.com to him, and in doing so decided to have a look into it myself. I was surprised to see 'least' spelled as 'list' at many places. Wonder whether it was jobsa1 or the company that is 'leasted' who should be blamed!

Right now i am fascinated with the websites that was made for that movie!!! wow!

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Word of the Day: Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist \TSYT-guyst; ZYT-guyst\, noun:
[Often capitalized] The spirit of the time; the general
intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any
period of time.

[Source: www.dictionary.com]

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Last Friday

Friday, the only day off. And my sleep broke off at 9:30 am. Welll, isn't that just ironic, since i had to work so hard to get up at times like that even on workdays! Maybe its my recent attempt at disciplining myself that is responsible for this. I made me some cereal, and feeling tired still tried to go back to sleep.

The rest of the day was just bad. My usual activities of refuge - music, movies, books, friends all seemed to have lost its appeal. I felt like doing nothing. I was doing nothing. So, in a way i was doing what i felt like... :) I wasn't fooling anyone... i was bored.

I tried watching "The Motorcycle Diaries" again, since the last time fell asleep during. All i got there was a baaad headache. At 6 I got ready for an official dinner. With the same people I spend the 6 days of the week, and am going to spend the next 6. And all of us being such geeks, i could tell how much fun it was going to be. Anyway, all throughout the night I felt the headache and tried to keep my wits about me. The occassion was really not handled well, the food was disliked by most, i guess they can't do much without having biryani for the deshi tongue. I enjoyed the food since i seem to have a condition that does not allow me to enjoy grease that much. get all pukey. Occassionally its fine tho.

As of today, the saturday... i shall be online, my old friends from Malaysia will poke fun at the fact that i have to work on saturdays... well, i think i deserve it. I dont really need the saturday break all the time, but sometimes would be nice.

And this fancy mouse i bought earlier this year... is acting up today... the left click is really requiring some technique....

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TimeOut@TimeOut

Tho i kindly refused amit's offer to join him for lunch at this new place 'time-out' (or old place.. its new to me), i ended up going there for dinner. and what a bunch we were! ol people from my old university (MMU Melaka), and also tanim and rubaiyath (non MMU people). Time Out seems like a nice place... jus when i was thinking there are so few places where you can sit outside walls and eat and enjoy a chat... a few places pop up... like Time Out. Tho we couldn't sit outside.. coz tanim was feeling hot! we had beef chap (our deshi version of beef steak maybe?), and paratha, lassi, coke. To top it all of.. sheesha.. strawberry flavored. Tanim kept choking with every puff!!! scary! the smokers, and i, as an ex-smoker had it. the others wouldn't go near it tho i tried to convince them that this is harmless. didn't buy it. then tanim wanted to have Nasi Goreng which was available at 'Chaat Street' across the open space outside (CS and TO share that space apparently, but share absolutely nothing else, competition is intense and they hate each other .. i think. they wouldn't do tanim the favor of going across the porch and getting him a plate of Nasi Goreng (in malaysian, Nasi= Rice, and Goreng = Fried). He went over there to ask those CS people if they would send over a plate of NG since the TO people said they would allow them to bring over a plate from CS. But CS people said that the TO people will want to fight them later over it... and that they would only allow him to take out NG .. if he can take it to TO and eat it.. fine! so much trouble over NG... why do people act so weird... for proprietary measures... sheessh... anyway tanim was adamant and he got his NG. He offered us some ... but all the MMU people who had like.. 4 or more years of this just refused.

It was fun listening to the AKTel bunch go over their problems, of how GP was apparently fooling people to believe Edge was GPRS when it is not... of switching and MSCs, no, i think i stopped them before they got to MSCs! :) and then we talked of the latest grameen ads, since tanim was also part timing at an ad firm that does AKTel's ads.... but he apparently liked the GP ads, whereas Rubaiyath who likes beautiful things didnt think they were beautiful. tanim tried explaining that it was ok for their target audiences - the young.. then we realized, oh my god.. we are not young anymore! he said the ads were more with the rhetoric they use rather than the polished idea of beauty we see everywhere. its in your face.. i think i agree. donno much on the subject, but i think it gets a message across. but i must admit many cows on a pink/purple background, just was baad. anyway, we stopped them too.. and then had a merry ol time looking back on life in MMU and making fun of each other... what else are friends for?

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Bosti (Slum)

in between bonani and mohakhali shorok is a tnt colony which is beside a bosti. there is a road through that bosti which can be used to go to mohakhali and thus gulshan 1 by rickshaw. during then you can see the garbage dumped by the waters, the small huts, you can get the stench of rot. across the water you can see the buildings on the other side, which provide a more humane abode for those who can afford it. we went by that road last night... and it was as if we were just passing by a grand river, and with the darkness hiding all the garbage and the poverty, it was hard to tell for someone who didnt know, that there was a bosti there. I sarcastically spoke out 'beautiful bosti' while i took this picture.... Now i realize, its not the bosti that is beautiful, but the view on the other side... the other side of the fence or the promise of a better place.... a better life, light on the other side of darkness.

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Quote with kothin bhaab...

Obtained through word of mouth:

"In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"

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Respectable Job.

Professions that are respectable in the eyes of middle-class and upper-class bangladesh Bangladesh:
Doctor
Engineer
Banker
Business
High ranks in the military
Executive in a multinational
(Did i miss any?)


Those that are not:

Police
Fireman
Chauffeur
Nurse
Factory Worker
House Help
Teacher (debatable in personal opinion.. but this is not about personal opinion. And probably will be excused if you are a woman)
...
All other professions.

Would i be wrong to say this? If i am wrong, then through my own weird twisted logic i will be very pleased. If NOT, is this right i wonder... or healthy?

Not to mention that the police and other govt. service workers have over the years earned their disrespect! Again, some businessmen also probably deserve disrespect in various degrees, but their ownership of wealth makes it all ok.

Money makes someone 'borolok' instead of just 'dhoni'. Could it be that this little piece of language is confusing us? And i laugh when i remember once that the driver of a CNG three-wheeler i was traveling in scolded a rickshawala as 'goriber baccha' for complaining about his bad driving! lol... the class system of money is here to stay?

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Movies, Masti, Magic... (Contd.)

Also...

Far And Away. This movie was first suggested to me by harry (harun). The passion with which he suggests a movie is what amazes me... "Maan its soooo goooood" is what he'll say with all his heart, eyes all shiny. Tho his influence on getting me to buy "Hum Tum" was not really appreciated, this one made up for it. Far and away is a tale of two people from two ends of their lives in Ireland countryside (one a farmer, the other a daughter of a rich landlord) leave their shores for the shores of America, the new land. Its based on those times when America was 'new land'. The story is nicely woven with the hate to love chemistry transformation between these characters played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (i think this is where their real life relationship started as well - Well actually.. it was 'Days of Thunder' as Shapps pointed it out...).

Cold Mountain. This is a story from the time of the war between the north and south of America. Here as well, romance is the theme of the movie. A reverand's daughter (N Kidman) falls for a working man in some brief encounters (Jude Law). Before they can get to know each other Jude is whisked off to the war that had broken out. It shows a lot of the chaos that the war had created in the far lands like Cold Mountain, and the resolve of this woman who is waiting for this man whom she barely knew... Its got great dialogues... thats what i found most appealing about the movie. Leaving the romantic lines alone.. i'll try and reproduce one of the dialogues about life:

"I believe there is a plan for everyone. A design. A bird flies somewhere, eats seed. Bird shits seed, plant grows. Bird's got a job, shit's got a job, seed's got a job. And ..you've got a job"

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July Morning

On the way to work.. i stopped and took some photos. The stop was inevitable since my baby had a flat tire... sorry, i still have the old habbit... i meant my 'cng'. So while the spare was being fixed on, i took two pictures... it is a beautiful morning.

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