past vs. present; success vs. failure

this is life. not everything is as it should be.
unfortunately in our case, Bangladeshis, most things are not.
however, as is always the case, just criticizing others and grumbling over the past will not change anything. as the wise man said, history is for us to learn from. thats all!! there is nothing we can do to change the past, so there is no point wasting our valuable time discussing what was right and what went wrong.

it is the present that we live in, and what we do here matters most. when i see all the injustices and screwed up things all around me, i get frustrated and pissed off. but then, when i ask myself what am i doing to make things better - i put myself to shame. i see that i am just talking the talk, but never walking the walk. eta nai, sheta nai; erokom kora uchit chilo, sherokom korle valo hoto: kintu korar khetre ami shunno.

so, my dear friends, let us stop talking the talk and start walking the walk. our capabilities and abilities may be little, our hands may be weak, and the destination may be too far away; but i am sure, together we can at least do something. we may never reach the goal, but we will at least be able to take one single step towards it.

remember, success is not reaching the goal, success is in working towards the right end. Similarly, failure is not failure to reach the target, it is failure to try.

today its Gaza. where will it be tommorrow?

today Gaza is being attacked and sane people all over the world are showing their frustration and sympathizing with them. But there is a veiled sense of security, and in the back of our mind we continue to think that this is a conflict too far away from to be much concerned about.

but is that really so... With the recent mumbai attacks be sure that war on terror is much closer to home (in Bangladesh). And every conscious individual knows that this war on terror is just another name of the all out efforts by select few at world domination and subsequent economic, political, cultural, and most importantly mental subjugation of most people.

The one and only way of avoiding such a miserable life is to wake up from our slumber and question ourselves: who are we? where do we come from? and where are we heading to?

today's Gaza can be far from home, but be sure that Gaza of tomorrow will be much closer to home than we can imagine. May GOD be with us.

'talks have failed again.'
'what? i thought you said things were under full control this time around'
'only apparently'
SIGH. 'what now'
BIG SIGH. 'what else?'
'god damn... why cant we just settle for something? or forget it altogether?'
'lasting peace or endless uncertainty? its ur choice.'
'never know peace came in so many pieces.'
...

random rumbling at 0113

its 1.13 AM. up so late (or is it so early) after a very long time. usually i switch to staying up at night and sleeping through part of the day in summer, when the night is too short to sleep through. earlier today went for karate classes for the first time since leaving melaka. thus was planning on sleeping early, but here i am listening to 70's music, and blogging, and thinking what am i doing? at 0119 hrs.

last month i was in cannes. my first attendance to a major conference. met a few old friends from aalborg, and realized conferences are more than just just conference. there is also a socializing, making contacts and traveling aspect to it.

traveling with my colleagues, one other thing i realized is how alcohol became the number 1 industry in the world. we usually had dinner together, followed by the gang going for a drink at a cafe/pub. a few casual drinks and each of them were counting like 30-50€, excluding the wine at dinner. i even saw a wine that costs over 500€ a bottle (75 cl).

but that was last month. now i am back in trondheim, my adopted hometown for the next three/four years, spending dreadful days with all sorts of theories (matrix theory, information theory, communication theory) for breakfast, lunch and dinner. [sometimes i really ask myself - how on earth did i end up being a researcher!!!]

okay, i guess thats enough rumbling to make a post. (thus i can continue claiming to be a blogger;)

its me again

thats the usual me. absent for a long time, once again.
wats happened in all this while???

well, first of all i (sort of you can say) recovering from a long negative peak in my efforts at trying to be who i am. the thing is i am sort of lost as to what it really means to be who you are. i wont really say confused. its that i more or less know what it is (theoretically speaking), but trying to put that into perspective of everyday life as a practicing and God fearing Muslim (alhamdulillah).

there is a hadith stating that our heart is like a white sheet to begin with. as time goes on, and we start sinning, black dots appear on this sheet one by one, until one day no traces of the original while remains. by definition, Islam is the deen-fitrah (the natural life style), which means being who you are should really go hand in hand with being a Muslim. but by now my heart is pretty black (may God help me) and which sort of made things complicated.

thats one good reason. but i guess there are more. i thing that i can think of the society i come from. back home you are born with a pack of expectations. become successful in life (ans success means being an engineer or doctor or such - and get a white collar job), get a beautiful wife and bla bla bla. i have been living abroad on and off for some time now, and i have come across many people who are really following their heart when it comes to doing something with their life. so i am sort of caught between two boats..... of course the "financial safety net factor" has a big role to play, but then again - where there is a will, there is a way.

life isnt really meant to be "and they are living happily forever ..." - and there is no fun to it. so i have no complaints.

the quest for survival goes on, and he laughs best who laughs last. i have my fingers crossed.

[photo credit: my dear friend shabbir ahmed the chemist]

slap the weakling as you wish

some emergency repair work is going on at meghna gomti bridge on dhaka chittagong highway, and so this bridge is now a one way street. the work which started on may 15 is planned to last 44 days. and that means we, the frequent travelers between dhaka and chittagong, have to face untold sufferings and long hours in queue to get across. newspaper reports say the queue itself was as long as 18 hours couple of days back.

bus owners took this opportunity slap us, the helpless passengers, with yet another blow - an unauthorized 10% fare hike. a timely slap when we are most vulnerable.

so now a bus trip between dhaka and chittagong is not only going to take longer, but also cost more. what a way to treat one's customers!!!

p.s. i heard even flight operators took benefit of this long jam, and hiked up their fares.

now you know how all those mercedes and bmw's plying the posh streets of bangladesh are financed.