Week 42: Starting to get some results, starting to collect new data

42nd-1st in Dhaka 6/18

We had a few losses of power at BUET today, more than we had the last two days. Really was disruptive to what work we were trying to get done. Another hiccup today was that Shegufta somehow erased half of her work. She’ll have to redo it now, and I’m sure it upset her more than it did me.

I’ve had to figure out how much to pay her for her help. I’d offered a few months back, and at the time she’d said no need, that experience was enough. But I brought it up again this time, and she accepted. I’ve used advice from Jen who is paying several assistants doing transcription work at Dhaka University. I also took into account the starting salary of a civil engineering graduate in Bangladesh (Tk15,000-Tk20,000 per month.)
This whole experience is me giving first time experience in managing personnel in civil engineering, as opposed to the rowing team, and making managerial decisions. Choosing work for an employee’s skill level is a neat challenge.

Tonight was a Fulbright get-together. It was my “turn” to organize it, so in the past week I’d sent out emails to everyone, trying to get a date set. Six students, two scholars, and Shaheen all were willing to come, so I set the date as today, and made a reservation at Red Tomato, the same restaurant I enjoyed with my parents when they were in Dhaka. Well by this evening two students had cancelled and one scholar didn’t show up, so it was a much smaller get-together than I had hoped. In fact, Jen and I were the only current Fulbrighters there. Kristin was a Fulbright last year, Julia is affiliated through an English-teaching grant, but not officially a Fulbright, and Dr. Haque had already had finished his grant, but just happened to be back in town. (pics: Julia/Dr. Haque/Jen/Ben at Red Tomato for Fulbright get-together, myself/Dr. Haque/Shaheen Khan at Fulbright get-together)

Bad part of the evening was that some people who ordered a pizza disliked it. Apparently it was way too saucy, with a bad sauce. I’ll put this as the second worst pizza in Dhaka, the worst being American Burger’s (who think it’s acceptable to put American Cheese on their pizza.

42nd-2nd in Dhaka 6/19

Today I got up early. I had planned to have three data collections today, one during the AM peak hour, one during the midday lull, and one during the PM peak, at the Elephant Road bus stop. I got there for the first data collection and decided the Trans Silva bus counter, in the middle and without any obstructions from the ticket seller’s bench, would be good to station myself. I asked the ticket seller if I could sit next to him while he worked, and he said sure. I collected data for one hour on the buses that passed about how crowded they were and how long they stayed at the stop. From this, and future data collections like this, I hope to arrive at a value which I can say represents the amount of crowded buses running in Dhaka every day.

While sitting there in the morning, I heard someone say my name. It was Altaf on his commute to work. He was buying a ticket for Trans Silva to go to his job (although I would advise him to take one of the six other buses which go to his job because they are all cheaper and of equal quality, Trans Silva tries to encourage people not to get on the bus at this stop for Motijheel/Gulistan by keeping its fares high for those stops.) He did quickly invite me to come visit at his office today before he boarded, so I told him I would.

The ticket seller I was sitting next to was great to talk to. I got to ask him questions about the buses, getting his take on things. Also found out, clearly from him, why some buses don’t come down this stretch of road at certain times. That was very valuable information that I’ve been wondering about for a long time! Because seven of the buses that come by here have to reach it by pulling a U-turn on a perpendicular road, during the 8:30-9pm period when offices are opening, the police want those buses to take an alternate route. However this alternate route still requires that U-turn, so I’m not sure what the benefits. It does, however, force passenger to have to cross a 4-lane divided road to get to board the bus on the perpendicular road: unsafe!

I went home just in time for Moweena to arrive. In fact she was waiting outside my gate because she was about to leave! If I tell her to come at a certain time, she likes to come a little bit early and then leave since I’m obviously not there yet. Despite how much I tell her I will always get back on time. This morning I was planning on showing her how to make French toast, as I really wanted it, and it’d be cool if she could make it sometimes. As I was about to explain, eggs and bread in hands, she guessed what I wanted to eat, just the Bangladeshi version. Well I asked her if that is the one with onions and chilies on it, and she responded in the affirmative…so I asked her to please make it without that, and she looked at me strange. But she did, and it was delicious!

Went to Motijheel to visit Altaf. He showed me photos of his new wife, they got married just recently. He also showed me photos from when Anwar was in town with Sanjana, and a neat photo of the two married brothers and their wives. We then got lunch next door and hung out at his office for a bit after. It’s been since March that I’ve seen him, every time I called earlier he was always busy. We remarked how everyone always feels busy in Bangladesh, always running someplace, but no one gets that much done. I’m going to blame the traffic.

I then headed straight to my second data collection at the same bus counter. No issues, a few more people talked to me asking what I was doing since it wasn’t early in the morning and they were more awake. The bus counter shift change occurred, and the guy from the morning introduced to the guy I’d be sitting next to again later in the evening.
For the third data collection it was raining when I arrived. That made it a bit more difficult, but I still managed somehow. It slowed down after the first ten minutes. It was a bit harder to see the buses in the dark, but it was only one hour, and I quickly acclimated. This day was more exhausting than I had expected.

42nd-3rd in Dhaka 6/20

Watched two movies today, one right after waking up and just while lying in bed, and one later during lunch. It was a great day at home. My last to spend all day at home for three weeks, so I wasn’t going to let it go.

I posted my blog, applied for jobs, read lots of online articles, relaxed all day. It felt great. Needed a day of recovery mentally and physically. Moweena made French toast again and it was delicious. Also getting good news about travel partners. And lots of emails back from professors and students for potential graduate schools.

In the evening, after relaxing all day, I attended a dinner at Jamal Ahmed’s home, where he was hosting this summer’s AIBS program for a meal. I was invited by the director Tony Stewart as an AIBS alumnus. The students were great to talk to, and Jamal’s home/studio (he is a famous artist) was clean with his latest work all around, and the food his wife made was great. Had some long conversations with several students about transportation. One particular student Jeremy, Ben, and I talked for a long time about different regions of the US and how they’re responding to their transportation issues, particularly Arizona where Jeremy is from (and I recently read a report about,) and then moved on to talking about ITS solutions and other fun transportation topics. I stayed until about 10:30, then grabbed a rickshaw home. (pics: summer AIBS students James and Luke along with Ben at AIBS dinner at Jamal Ahmed's home, paintings in Jamal Ahmed's studio (sorry blurry))

42nd-4th in Dhaka 6/21

It’s always very humid in the house now. The rains are coming each day, but nothing heavy yet, at least not in Dhaka. The problem with the humidity is that it gets into everything. My towels don’t dry anymore between showers. And I noticed that my favorite hat hanging on the wall for a few months is now moldy! Very upset about that. I need to make sure all cloth items are staying locked up or I’m going to have a lot of ruined clothing. I checked some of the clothes I have in bags under my bed, and those seem ok. I don’t have space to store them.

Working with Shegufta at BUET today was productive. I did more writing than I usually do, wrote some Visual Basic code, and crunched some numbers on my data sheets. She processed three buses.

Moweena came in the evening because she came too late in the morning to do anything productive. I had her wash clothes, including my sidebag, which has gotten really gross. In fact a lot of the things I use a lot get this layer of grime that I can feel. Its sweat, just built up on the fabric.

Today I also met a guy who worked on Dhaka’s Strategic Transportation Plan, the document I spent about a month browsing through when I first started reading up on Dhaka. He was telling me how he did a lot of technical work under the guys running the project from Louis Berger. I bombarded him with questions, and I think I wore him out! I asked them how many people were on the team who collected the data, how much time it all took, what were his direct responsibilities, what the management structure was like. I was very interested to know what goes into such a large project of studying solutions for a city with horrible traffic.

42nd-5th in Dhaka 6/22

Went to BUET at the usual time, but Shegufta called me to tell me she won’t be coming in today. So I spent the whole day coding one small part in Visual Basic. Somehow the computer isn’t blocking me, don’t know what changed. But I was able to run it and test it for errors. It works now and I’m very proud to have written my first visual basic program.
Simply, it’s a program which takes my alights and my boardings from two different sections of my sheet, and analyzes them as they would’ve actually happened in real life. This involved a lot of IF-THEN and DO WHILE statements, but I got it to logically work out the order of the alights and boards. Even got to play with an array! Was fun to figure it out. Then fun to have the data automatically reentered back into the sheets.

After, I met up with Farabi in Dhanmondi. Hadn’t seem him since January when he came to visit family for a few weeks. He’s here for the summer now, and is trying to do some social volunteering work. Always tough it seems, the project he joined basically gave him office work, so he left, and will be going to Grameen Bank now to work with them.

Farabi and I tried going to play some billiards, but the place we went was packed. We stood around for half an hour hoping one of the table’s would clear up, but all of them just got more packed as more and more university students came by to meet up with their friends who were already playing. Realizing we’ll likely never play, we walked down to Rifles Square to go bowling. We bought socks since we both were in sandals, and played on their 4-lane alley. Of those 4 lanes, we were to find out two don’t work at all, one lane is only able to handle one bowler, and the other can only handle two. We had to wait for a couple to finish on the two-person lane. When we finally got to bowl, we bowled two games each. I got 116 and 112, about 30 points less than my average at home, but the difference mostly came because I was not completing any of my spares. My accuracy was very poor today.

From there we went to Mirpur Rd. to find a place for some food. We ended up stumbling upon a place called Shanghai. Farabi had said he didn’t want Chinese food, but I told him I had a hunch that this place didn’t serve it, despite the name. Well we went in and the place was themed in Chinese décor, but the menu was everything but! In fact the menu was full of neat items, and I was excited we’d found the place, I will definitely come back. While there, I looked again at the sign, and realized that it said “Out of Shanghai”, surely that is the reason the menu is intentionally not Chinese.

42nd-6th in Dhaka 6/23

A few things in the Gulshan area to get done. One was to go by the Best Air office and buy a ticket for Dhaka to Bangkok in late September. They are having specials right now, but not on one-way tickets. So I tried to buy the ticket, but uh oh, problem as always with buying tickets. I can’t buy for September yet! They have only set their summer schedule, which runs to the end of August. So their fall schedule is not made yet, so no one knows when they’ll fly, if the route will even exist, or at what price!! So I was told I have to wait until the end of July to buy a ticket for September, because they won’t have the schedule ready until then.

Also, while I waited to hang out with Farabi, dropped by a few jewelry making stores and looked into making cuff links with the pearls I had. Only one or two even knew what cuff links were. Gathered prices from those who could identify a cuff link.
Farabi and I finally met up after he finished hanging out with someone else, and debated what to do. We didn’t want to hang out around food, but that’s all we could think of. We tried going to the Western Grill which is inside an old airplane, but they were closed. We ended up just going back to his family’s place where he’s staying and played cards and had snacks.

I then headed over to Gulshan 1 for data collection. I stood at the Gulshan 1 west side ticket counter and recorded the buses passing at their peak hour. When I stand at these data collections, a lot of people come up to me and ask me which bus to get on for certain destinations, and also ask where certain bus counters are. I guess I look professional, or rather I don’t look busy. Sure it’s a mixture of both. Data collection went fine. Left my bag with the Winner ticket counter, but the guy kept leaving since the bus has such long headways at night. So I kept staying at the counter to watch my bag. Three guys talked to me so long I swear they missed the buses they wanted.

42nd-7th in Dhaka 6/24

Morning started at home, a breakfast of egg, roti, and honey. Headed to BUET, and got there around 10:30. Shegufta and I set to work. She had three more buses to process until we were all caught up. I had some graphs I wanted to make in my analysis that I could show to Dr. Rahman in a meeting the afternoon. I also worked to make my spreadsheets easier to use. I’ve created a lot of data and I can’t let it get out of hand. I also tried starting an abstract for this conference, but didn’t get far, wanting to wait to talk to Dr. Rahman instead.

Trying to get some graphs printed out for Dr. Rahman for our meeting turned out to be quite an adventure. BUET doesn’t have ANY printers for use of the students, says Shegufta. She blames it on the fact that they only pay Tk22 a semester for tuition, but I said that’s silly since they are a public school, and their tuition is of Tk22 doesn’t go to anything useful, so using that logic they wouldn’t even have teachers. Anyway, no printer at BUET.
So I went to Nilkhet, where all BUET students go to print things. But it was Tuesday, so the entire place was closed. Not a single place I could print. Meeting time was getting close, so I rushed over to Azimpur to try and find someone to print from. Found a computer place, with three dusty computers. The guy said they could print. This was the slowest computer and slowest printer I’ve seen in this decade. But it got printed and I rushed back to BUET in time for my meeting, total time used to print out four pages, 55 minutes!

Meeting went fine. Showed Dr. Rahman my graphs, and was glad to be finally showing him some results. We talked about the conference I want to go to in Chennai in September, that Dr. Stone at NC State told me about. Talked about writing the abstract and the draft paper, and what types of things I should focus. What I took away from the meeting is that I need to focus on making graphs and charts readable for users. Any graph not understandable is a bad graph.

Working with Shegufta has been good. She spends all day listening to my voice, which I will applaud her for, I’m sure that can get frustrating. She does get a real kick out of certain recordings in which the recorder has picked up a conversation of someone asking me things about my work in Bengali. She starts giggling.

In the evening I spent some time looking at flights in Southeast Asia from Singapore to Bangkok. It is cheap, about 62 dollars. The plethora of low cost carriers in Southeast Asia is driving down prices to absurd levels.

Emily warned me that there are problems happening in Darjeeling. I hadn’t looked at the news at all. It looks like we’ll be canceling that part of the trip. The Gorkha people, who originate from Nepal, are striking, wanting their own state in India, called Gorkhaland. They told all tourists to leave. Thus, we will likely drive straight to Nepal after reaching Siliguri.

Week 34: Bus jealousy, when my bus is empty and your bus has people hanging out the door

34^th-1st in Dhaka 4/23

Today I used my water responsibly. I stayed home for the 9am and noon water times, and showered, washed clothes, washed dishes, and got other water related activities done.

Headed to BUET where I did some database work, but also had a really good meeting with Dr. Rahman. I had printed out a sample of my spreadsheet with bus data on it. He had lots of questions, and it was a good chance to dive into details of my project. Asked me questions that made think about the project in a new way. We also talked at length about academic paper writing, report writing, and getting published. He showed me some of the work he’s gotten published, and told me about other students who have published under him. It was comforting to know about his experience with it all. He also said that about 90% of everything he’s ever submitted has been accepted.

Had a Fulbright dinner tonight and five out of eight of us came. Shaheen, who’s in charge of us at the American Center, brought her husband and daughter. Plus Harvey and Jo Ann Sernovitz came as well. Talked to them a bit about the new Fulbrights, including my friend Samantha who got it.
The highlight of the night for me was telling the joke I’d created in Srimangal to Dr. Ahrar Ahmad (Fulbright Scholar), Shaheen, and Shaheen’s husband and anyone else who understood Bengali. After I told the punch line they all cracked up, which made me feel a bit of success that I’d written a good Bengali joke. (pic: Rafat, Julia (non-Fulbright), and Karen at Fulbright dinner)

34^th-2nd in Dhaka 4/24

I’ve noticed that the streets seem empty midday when it’s really hot out. They’ll have people until about noon, but soon after, and until the late afternoon, people seem to retreat inside under the heat of the sun.

Took my camera around today to get some shots of things I’d been meaning to try and capture on film. Got a good shot today, a mother letting her kid urinate in the middle of the sidewalk while everyone just walked by not disturbed by the event. This is not rare. (pic: mother letting her child urinate on the sidewalk near New Market)

Today was a day of bus riding. I left early and thought I could easily get four to five buses done with time to even make it to BUET midway through to see a presentation being done on transportation safety and be home before the 9pm water time.

I did two routes before heading to BUET for the presentation. But again I had bad luck with a BUET presentation. The transportation portion of the lectures were in the morning, and the afternoon was talking about emergency response and trauma care. This was not nearly as interesting to me. I stayed for about an hour but then left to collect more bus data.

At some point during one of the presentation, an Australian doctor who was talking asked a group in the audience to please refrain from whatever they were doing since it was distracting to him. I’ve mentioned before how the TV cameras can be interrupting during a speech, but the audience usually has an similar level of etiquette during performances or speeches. From what I can gather, it is not considered rude to talk on one’s cell phone during a presentation, at whatever volume. Many people talking on the phone during cultural performances and professional speeches. It is also not impolite to get up and leave midway through a speech or performance. People are getting up and down at every moment during the presentation to leave or move around the room. Talking between each other, even at loud volumes is also not considered rude. For example, with Arjun and his friends, I might whisper something to them during a show, and they will respond to me at full volume. The exact incident which disturbed the talker today was that there was some candy that had been distributed, and it was being passed noisily around, with a group of men bickering about who received more. As well, behind them, there was a group of students loudly debating something about the program. (pic: gentleman casually talking on the phone during a presentation)

Got some good shots of this today: motorcycles using the sidewalk when traffic is bad! They veer off the road, and start barreling down the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to jump out of the way. However, people selling things are still barriers for the motorcycles, and are things to go slowly past! This is obviously a huge safety issue, but hard to control. There already is a lack of traffic enforcement, (mentioned today at BUET as one of the biggest things missing in Bangladesh for traffic safety.) (pics: motorcyclist making use of the sidewalk in traffic, motorcyclist navigates his bike past a man selling dates)

Took two more buses after this. I took one bus past where I usually get off, as I knew it left the city limits. Didn’t know exactly how far it went, and wanted to see. It went far! Farther than I expected. In fact, I never saw the end as I got off early because it was getting late. Took buses back, one which stopped early, refunded us a part of our fare, because it saw traffic was so bad it didn’t feel like sitting in it.

34^th-3rd in Dhaka 4/25

Moweena and I worked out how we are going to handle this water situation. She comes before we have water, and has to leave for other homes before as well. I’m going to buy a big bucket for holding lots of water, so she can cook and clean with that, and still have water buckets for washing and flushing in the bathroom.

Ayon, Farhan, and I decided to hang out in the evening. We met up at my place, stayed there looking at pictures and movies, then headed out to Dhanmondi Lake, where we strolled for awhile, watched fishermen, I told Ayon my Srimangal joke, waited around until a program started at the outdoor theater, then took a rickshaw up to Shangkor where we got a snack. They are both very interested in my project, asking me lots of questions and looking through my work with honest interest.
Tonight also bought Arnob’s new CD “Doob.” Also Dipto, Ishita’s older brother, recently released his new solo album, and so we had the CD store put the album in so we could listen to it. (pic: Farhan/Ayon showing off Dipto's new CD)

I’ve mentioned how hot it’s been. Well the heat is coming down a little bit this week, into the low 90s. It feels very refreshing! But during this heat, I made sure to take photos of the many ways to stay cool as best as you can. The number one way, and easiest, is to have a simple piece of paper (newspaper, folder) and block the sun. A lot of people walk around or sit on the bus like this. Another option is to drape a rag over your head. A lot of men like to do this as most men seem to carry a rag for wiping their brow. (pics: man walking along the sidewalk using a sheet o paper to block the sun, rickshaw wallah with rag drapped over his head)

Umbrellas are also popular, but obviously more expensive than a rag or a piece of paper. While in traffic, people pull their rickshaw covers over their head. And while stuck and not moving, rickshaw wallahs will get off their rickshaw and sit in the shade of the rickshaw in front of them. If you have nothing at all, just pulling your shirt up over your neck is effective as well. (pics: man using an umbrella to block the sun, two girls with an umbrella to add some shade, rickshaw wallah stuck in traffic has gotten off his rickshaw and is sitting in the shade of the rickshaw in front of his, man pulling up shirt to block his neck and back of head from the sun)

Businesses, to block out the sun, hang sheets in front of their store. This may be as simple as just letting it hang in front, or creating a canopy with poles. Fans are also popular and cheap to buy. (pics: shops near New Market form a tent complex with poles and sheets, a sheet hanging in front of a store to block the sun, newspaper clipping with photo of a man selling hand fans)

34^th-4th in Dhaka 4/26

Today was a work day, and boy did I get work done. I got five buses processed in the morning, went to campus got those five buses databased, and then got two and a half more buses processed after that. This new method using the internet stopwatch is definitely adding to my efficiency. I’m doing the data processing (my least favorite) part so much faster.

This morning, as well, I set up donaldkatz.com with Saket’s help. It’s now up and running and you can go and visit it. It’s going to work as just a central place for all things about me on the internet. I hope to use it frequently, but not daily, nor even weekly. I’ll maintain for it employers to see who I am, and for people who google my name to find information easily.

I also signed up for LinkedIn, something my father suggested I do years ago. Well now I’m there joining the rest of the professional world. Made a profile and made the site as best as I could.

34^th-5th in Dhaka 4/27

Data collection was frustrating today. Neither bus got crowded, and that always feels like a waste of time since I already have plenty of non-crowded routes collected. I always feel like all the other buses I’m not on are always more crowded than mine. Who thought I’d have bus jealousy!

Checked into flights again today for my flights in and out of India and Nepal. The travel agent ran a quick search and produced some high values. Ultimately he said my best option is just to buy through Jet Airways. Realized later that I can get probably get airline miles by flying then rather than a Bangladeshi airline, and checked into it. Discovered that I can earn miles on my American Airlines flight miles account.

Emailed some professors today at Virginia Tech, UIUC, and Northwestern. Starting to get in contact to get more information and find my way at places. Some neat opportunities I think will arise.

34^th-6th in Dhaka 4/28

Today was a tiring day on the buses. I rode five, which is the most I’ve ever ridden in one day. And each had its own share of issues. First off, I learned that today buses across the city were allowed to increase their fares if they desired. This is a motion but forward by the bus owner’s association. A few companies didn’t, but most did. Some as much as 33%. Such a high rise is due to the rising prices of CNG in the city, and the difficulty and time needed for refilling. Lines at CNG stations don’t ever go away it seems, even late at night. In fact, they might be even longer at night as all the hired drivers of people’s personal cars are told to refill CNG when the car isn’t needed. Thus lines build and build. So in response to rising prices, the ticket prices of many buses went up. To combat any outbursts from angered bus riders, police were stationed near major bus stoppages. In fact, I found most of the information of price increases from the police officers when I asked why they were here today. (pics: line for CNG at a station south of Uttara, CNGs line up for a refill in Kuril)

Actually, before I found out about the ticket price raises, I could sense something was different today. Couldn’t place what it was, but I could sense it in the air, that everyone knew something I didn’t. That something was happening that no one told me about.

The buses all had their problems today, for some reason they all had a reason to be frustrating. Bus #1 skipped some of its stops for no apparent reason where lots of people would’ve boarded, meaning it didn’t get as crowded as it could’ve gotten. As well, there was a rare long line to buy the ticket today, perhaps people were fighting the higher ticket prices. Bus #2 skipped stops as well, and didn’t get even close to full. At least bus #1 got a bit crowded! Bus #3 wasn’t starting from its usual spot, and that’s when I talked to the police officers to see what was going on. The bus is no longer running to that stop because it’s trying to reduce its CNG usage, so I had to take another bus to go up one more stop to catch the other bus. Bus #4 was packed when it came to pick us up, and thus I had the choice to stand the whole route and risk being told to stand in back and not see the door (where all the action I record occurs) or take a seat at the front on the flat area over the engine. I had to take that seat to be guaranteed a sight line to the door the whole time, but the seat was scorching hot as the engine was below, but I had to just be tough through it. Still, I lost sight lines at some periods and it made data collection difficult. Bus #5 was the most frustrating. I had to wait 40 minutes for it, which usually isn’t a big deal to me. But then to reward me for my waiting, the bus that showed up was one of their three buses which has an odd bus shape that I’m not studying (so I had to wait for the next bus another 15 minutes.) Then, to reward me for even more waiting, this bus got caught by the bus behind it, meaning both buses were hitting the stoppages at the same time, and neither bus got the ridership it would if they traveled separately. Meaning the bus got only slightly crowded, instead of the jam packed level I know it can achieve. (pics: example shots of an uncrowded bus and the same bus with moderate crowding)

Funny story today, I was sitting in a hotel eating my lunch, and I see a teenage boy in a school uniform walk into the restaurant. He walks straight up to my table, grabs one of my water glasses, gulps it down, puts it back on the table, and turns to leave. I wasn’t sure what to say. Well a guy at another table called the kid over and yelled at him, giving him a “What do you think you are doing boy?” talk. I really can’t tell what possessed the kid to do what he did, nothing like I’d ever seen before. The guy at the other table told him to go pay the Tk1 for the water.

Today I saw a fire truck outside a building with all the residents/workers of the building standing outside. I could only assume the building was evacuated for a fire alarm. Either way something was happening, and people were supposed to be out of the building. They were all staring on, and a huge crowd had gathered. However, there was a classic “what is wrong with this picture” when I saw someone else staring curiously at the fire truck: someone on the fifth floor of the building who didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to leave the building. If this was high school, he’d get detention.

34^th-7th in Dhaka 4/29

Went shopping with Diya at New Market. She invited me out and she was buying A-level practice tests. At Nilkhet you can buy old test papers for real cheap. The A-level tests look very similar to AP tests, but are required for all graduating students! And there are a series for each subject, a stressful situation for the students.
After I then went and bought some material for three new shirts that I’ll have tailored.

I’ve come to find out that the lady that Moweena always talks to through my window lives in another house she works at. Not sure if it was always like that, but Moweena said for two months now she has been working there. She also works upstairs of that place too. So really all three places she works could be reached by the same fire escape (if such a thing existed) as the buildings jut right up next to each other. As it is, Moweena has to walk way way around to reach their apartment building which is on another road.

After New Market this morning, I went and got a haircut. Then got some passport photos taken for the many visas I’ll have to apply for in the coming months. Also printed out the Indian visa application.

Went to Kozmo Lounge this afternoon for lunch and stayed there answering emails and working on fellowship applications (just beginning the work.) Also did some data processing. Nice to be working in a new environment, and I was a bit more productive.

I made a promise to myself, I’m going to get up early and run tomorrow.

Week 12: Thanksgiving and "Oh No! Haircut Time"

Last week I mentioned how Chili's and Best Buy were here, and now I have the pictures! (pics: Chili's right?; nope inside you'll find Thai/Chinese!; Best Buy right? nope inside you'll find soap and non-perishable food products)

12^th-1st in Dhaka 11/21

Today I did a big trip around the city for various things, northeast to southeast to southwest to north central back to northeast.

Estimated how much I’m saving by taking buses everywhere instead of rickshaws. On the low end, I calculated about $30 a month. But on the high end, I estimated $120 a month. It’s because CNGs are just so expensive, but the only option if you want to travel far and don’t take buses.

After class I headed right down to Motijheel where I was going to have lunch with Altaf. I had had to reschedule it to today because of my rescheduled meeting with Dr. Rahman yesterday. I met him at his office and he showed me around where he worked. Met his coworkers, and we all had lunch in their conference room. Altaf sent for some briyani and it was delicious, also tried some cow stomach they had as well.

Took a bus to Nilkhet Market to pick up my copied STP. I got there, and they were just finishing. So I got to watched them bind the new copy with string and add the binding glue and material.

Took another bus to Banani. Met up with Jayita and Ishita for an hour. Another of Jayita’s friends was there, and him and I talked a bit about his computer engineering project he’s working on. Jayita and Ishita gave me more details about their club’s performance on Saturday I’m going to see.

I inquired about the tallest building in Bangladesh several times now. I’m now quite sure it’s the Bangladesh Bank Building (first three photos on the page), at 115 m and 30 floors. It’s not super super tall, but it’s the tallest here. About the same height as the tallest in Raleigh (except this city has 10 times as many people!) I spent some time today looking at many websites about skyscrapers in Dhaka. Pretty much the city has hundreds of buildings between 15 and 30 floors, but not above that.

Well in all my searching for pictures I landed upon a neat blog of Ershad Ahmed who worked as a civil engineer up until the 90s. Wanted to share some of my favorite posts of his to show what Dhaka's buildings look like, and other neat stuff!
Tall Building Photos
More Tall Building Photos, most of BBB
Incredible collection of maps

Got a call about another cool housing opportunity. 5 bedrooms, 8 people, central AC, great location. I’ll explore tomorrow night with them. Good price as well.

12^th-2nd in Dhaka 11/22

Today is Thanksgiving, but you wouldn’t know it unless you were from the US or Canada and celebrated it. Most people I talked to about it hear have heard about it, but don't what happens.

After class went to a Thanksgiving lunch at the woman’s home who runs the American Center. She invited all the Fulbrights and some of her other ex-pat friends for Thanksgiving lunch. Lunch was everything Thanksgiving, and well done too. It was cool to see most of the Fulbrights there, Jen didn’t come. Nafisa had just left her phone on a taxi, but she was quite stable, I know that I would make me a wreck. Really good turkey, pie, cranberry sauce, and potatoes.

Met Karen, another Fulbright, but she’s with the Fulbright-Hayes program, a slightly different scholarship. She’s currently staying with Megan. Cool thing! Karen went to NC State. She graduated 10 years ago, but she went; another alumnus! She also lived in Sullivan Hall for one year. It was real cool to talk North Carolina with her, and about all the NC State stuff we could. She remarked how weird it is to be hearing all these names and places so far around the world.

It’s weird not to be home for Thanksgiving I guess. Every year I’ve been with my family, almost every year in NJ. I hope that I get to talk to some people since they have a bit of a break in their life right now.

I went to Megan’s for Thanksgiving dinner. I was supposed to go see a new house today, but they cancelled on me since they got back from work late. Oh well. Got to spend the whole night at Thanksgiving. Megan had 5 of us over: myself, Karen, Faisal, and two guys from her work who are both medical students. We had chicken instead of turkey. I “carved” the chicken, or in other words, ripped it apart into manageable sized parts. We had pie and rolls courtesy of Jen who had cooked a lot for another Thanksgiving dinner.

12^th-3rd in Dhaka 11/23

All plans got cancelled today. Not seeing either house. Dance practice was moved to Sunday. So now nothing to do.

Went to Farhan’s house. Chilled in his room and had some snacks. Listened to music and talked. Saw the music video for my favorite Bangladeshi song “Rong” which was cool. Just a relaxing time. Afterwards we got some petha on the street. I started feeling a bit sick at his house. A bit of a cough and some congestion on the way home.

I forgot to mention last time that petha is only a winter-time treat. Apparently this is the season for petha, and it will be on the streets only for the next month or so. Get it while it’s hot!

I got back and went to Megan’s place, had some leftover Thanksgiving food while sitting around with Jen, Ben, Karen, and Faisal. Later hung out on the roof with Faisal and Karen and Megan. Tried to get me to come to a party. I wasn’t up for it. Wasn’t feeling good. Was congested and coughing more and more. Drank some ginger tea that Karen gave me.

In Dhaka, there are many many signs for concrete and steel. Much more than I ever remember seeing in the US. Why I thought? Do these businesses have a lot money? Are they competing hard for business? Why would they want to advertise so thoroughly to the general public. Wouldn’t they want to focus only on their buyers. But after thinking about it, I realized maybe why it’s like this. Dhaka is the second fastest growing city in the world only to Lagos, Nigeria. So, when you’re growing, you are building a lot. Thus, a market is created where building supplies are not only in high demand, but suppliers must advertise to stay competitive. Thus because of this building boom, and so many things under construction at one time, it becomes a market necessity to make your name known. Any thoughts on this theory?

12^th-4th in Dhaka 11/24

I woke up feeling real gross from being sick. Spent the morning at home. Did some studying and other things. My head hurts, my body hurts, and my nose is stuffed. Feeling badddd.
Went to Café Mango for a bit and had some ginger tea.

In the evening I was heading to Jayita’s and Ishita’s Cultural Club’s performance.
Because I got to Jayita’s part of town early, I had some nuts, cookies, and tea on the street in front of their apartment building. Then wet up to meet Ayon and her sister Kakoli to head over.

The performance was in a very nice performance center near Dhaka University called Osmani Memorial Auditorium. Very fancy place, gorgeous grounds. I can’t imagine an NCSU performance of a cultural club arranging such a nice venue.
I sat with Jayita’s sister Kakoli, Ayon, and his sister Sraboni (the one who just got married.) We were in the 3^rd row. Well, the official 3^rd row, the place was utterly packed, kids were sitting in the aisles and in front of the stage on the ground. Hugely popular event. It was about 2 hours long, and started about a half hour later than the time they told us. There was a real pretty program with essays and pictures. I haven’t gone through it in detail, but I did read Jayita’s essay. Mainly because Ayon read it first, and pointed out to me that she had written about me in there. She and I had had a conversation a few weeks ago about how proud I was to visit all their memorial sites, and how I thought how special their history was. Well this inspired her to include that into her thoughts about how Bangladeshis should be proud of their country’s history in her essay. Glad I was a small inspiration.
The performance was pretty incredible. I was moved to some tears at the beginning when they had a battle scene set in the Liberation War of 1971, followed by the playing of the national anthem with the flag in the background and five different war figures (a crying girl, a victorious soldier, mother holding injured son, and two others I can’t recall)…it was very moving, and I felt how powerful it was.
During the show, Ayon and I snacked on the cookies I’d bought beforehand. The show actually was all in Bengali, and so I didn’t understand 90% of it. But I still got the point of most performances, liked the songs, and laughed at the humorously acted out parts.
Oh, and this whole time I’m feeling pretty sick, ughhhhhh. (pics: Osmani Memorial Auditorium interior, end of show with all club members on stage, close-up of Jayita (in green) and Ishita (third golden shiny shirt from right) at the end)

12^th-5th in Dhaka 11/25

Feeling a tad better today, maybe because I forgot to set my alarm and woke up an hour late! Had 10 minutes to get ready for class and get there! Not like they can start the class without me, I’m the only student.

Went to class in a sweatshirt…so comfy, but I’m sick. Test took a long time today to complete, but I also tried writing some complex sentences. Today’s reading was fun, we’re reading about Dubai! I love that place and really want to go one day. Conversation class was fairly relaxed, and Nadia and I recorded a conversation so people (well Saket asked about it) back home can hear me talk, but the quality isn’t so great.

In the evening all the Fulbrights, significant others (if applicable), and friends went to a restaurant together, and Harvey, who is in charge of us came as well with his wife and daughters. We went to a real good Bangladeshi restaurant in Gulshan-2. Actually, there are two restaurants with this name, right near each other. Why? Are they related..not sure? Anyway there was a bit of confusion and preference on which one was meant and which was better. Dinner was delicious. Heard Lauren’s story on how she got mugged the other day. Shared food with Nafisa and her cousin Ridwan who came along. (pics: Karen/Megan/Nafisa/Ridwan at dinner, me/Jen/husband Ben at dinner and I'm wearing Jen's glasses to reenact my Aktel photo shoot experience)

Afterwards we went to Movenpick ice cream parlor…ice cream was pretty good. Got espresso and caramel, but it’s a bit of a fancy place, so their names on the menu consisting of 2 or 3 words were twice as fancy as their taste. (pics: super nice ice cream parlor with Karen and Erin ordering; disappointed in my ice cream spoon which was functionally designed for scooping in deep cups, but not structurally designed for withstanding the hardness of ice cream and thus bending upon scooping and not extracting the ice cream)

Today I also found that Brand New had released a new song…(fork and knife) it is the mastered version of Untitled 07. Excellent!

Skyped with mom and dad! Yay! Always great to do that.

12^th-6th in Dhaka 11/26

Why is a bathroom called a water closet? Well, at least here in Bangladesh, it really is a room which could be covered in water, and is about closet size. Since most bathrooms here don’t have special shower basins or tubs, the entire bathroom becomes soaked when you bathe. The shower head is usually in the middle of the room, and the drain is in the center of the bathroom floor. So this closet is usually soaked! For this reason, you always wear sandals in the bathroom. The floor is usually wet all day from showering, so whenever you simply want to use the toilet, and don’t want to get your feet wet, you put the sandals on! These sandals are left outside the bathroom for all to use: visitors and family members.

Went to Arirang with Megan, Jen, Ben, Tuni, Clay, and Kristin. Korean food. Putting a lot of faith in the place since last time I got food poisoning. This time I went with all safe eating options, just in case. Kristin talked to us about her new eco-friendly hotel resort she’s organizing now that she’s post-Fulbright. Tuni and Clay leave Friday to go back to the states…crazy to think I’ll be at that point in 9.5 months.

Everyone has been sick recently, foreigners and Bangladeshis. The “cooler” weather is at fault I guess. It’s now high 70s low 80s during the day instead of being mid 80s...drastic changes!!

Worked on my calendar for my Fulbright project. Recorded what I’ve been thinking about for changes to my project, and listed my goals and action items. Started structuring my schedule, put in the breaks at least!

12^th-7th in Dhaka 11/27

Tired in class today. Still a bit sick.

Sujit made an excellent lunch of stuffed bell peppers with mutton and mashed potato cakes. I think it was all leftovers from yesterday, and to tell the truth, this meal was better! He also made some interesting new breakfast today…he gave us thin crepe like pancakes and a sticky molasses like sauce that was made from dates. Very sweet and thick and strong. Could only eat two.

Finished off the calendar after lunch. Added some more details but didn’t want to complete it entirely since I wanted to get Dr. Rahman’s opinion of it.

Had problems printing at home, so I brought it to a printing/copy store near my house in Nadda bazaar…found out its cheaper to print one and copy it many times, than printing anything multiple times.

Dr. Rahman and I met for about an hour. He was not sure how we could apply my new idea of travel journals to the project. I was really interested in keeping track of people’s mode choice habits. Said I need to do a good lit review before I jump into any decisions. Said a good 3 months of reading only at least. Well I start in a little under 2 weeks. I’ll be spending time in the library reading at first. Getting a handle on history and policies of here.

So what one thing I didn’t think about before going to South Africa, and then again here, was where to get a haircut. Maybe other foreigners never think about this either, don’t know. But its quite scary. All of a sudden you get to the point where your hair is getting long, and you realize you have to tell another person to cut your hair the way you want it in another language! And if they mess up, or you don’t get the words across right, your hair is now massacred! Now I guess I could’ve gone to a nice English-speaking barbershop, but, well I didn’t.
So, got the haircut after dinner. I went to a small hole-in-the-wall place in the bazaar near my house. Here, a man goes to a “saloon” to get a haircut. This saloon had chairs for 3. They only use scissors and combs, not sure how clean either were, and don’t have any clippers or actually anything that needed power. Cutting the side of one’s head with scissors is very hard to do as opposed to using clippers. I’m not sure if my guy was being extra careful, but it took him 2 hours to do everything! He must’ve gone back to my sideburns 8 times! He was very careful with them. He shaved my neck with an actual razor, but no shaving cream. In fact, he didn’t use anything but water until he shaved my face. I really didn’t know why he shaved my face, then put more cream on, and shaved it again. As I found out afterward, a man’s face is always shaved twice at the saloon in Bangladesh. He also put shaving cream on my nose, and I’m not sure why, because he just wiped it off after.
I was quite nervous about this haircut, probably why I waited 12 weeks to get one. I guess I’m willing to chance my Bengali on most things in this country, except when it comes to something that’ll be permanent for me. Haven’t been to a doctor yet, that would be similar I assume. But take food for example, if I mess up, I don’t have to eat it…and if it makes me sick, that only lasts one day. But haircut, that could be long term damage! So I was glad it turned out all right. My hair had gotten pretty long, and I was only liking it when it was under my hat
He told me to name my own price. I had heard a haircut should cost Tk50 to Tk80, but I assume those haircuts only take half hour at most. This was a marathon haircut, and he did a great job, and I’m sure he lost business taking all my hair off so carefully. Ultimately I gave him everything in my pockets, Tk160, probably overpaid, but ultimately, it’s only $2.00.

Week 7: Durga Puja and the buying of a jump rope

7^th-1st in Dhaka 10/17

Was planning on going to a concert today, but Nafisa and Rizwan backed out. She because of work, and he because he thought the show wouldn’t be too good.

Spent most of the day in Café Mango, just to be out of the house and in a new environment. Typed up journal there. Got a coffee drink. Planned to do some homework, but didn’t get far, not really feeling like it. Compiled my blog entry. No internet here, so I just have it ready to go when I get some.

And the street fight tally is now at six…saw two more last week.

7^th-2nd in Dhaka 10/18

Today I walked to Banani and back. Goal was to find a dry cleaner, and maybe some more Bangladeshi clothing, probably a fotua. Didn’t find any in my price range. Also shopped around for a flash drive and computer speakers. Still pricing around. Want to buy a 4GB one to backup all my pictures here.
Ended up buying two more pairs of pants since I like the ones I have so much, and they’re so cheap.

Went to Nafisa’s aunt’s house tonight. It was an Eid party. Hung out with her cousins, Nafisa, and relatives. Dinner was incredibly good, her Aunt is a great cook. I think I’ll go by this week for dinner, she keeps inviting me.

7^th-3rd in Dhaka 10/19

Finding out more about my cook slowly. He has a son. He spent three years of his life in Kuwait, which he did not like. He went for work. I always have a hard time understanding him, but I think he said he cooked for a real rich household. He was upset that they would throw out their leftover food instead of reusing it. He also can speak at least five languages: Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, and English.

Today took bus down to Dhanmondi to visit Farhanaz and her family. After getting to Dhanmondi, I found my way to Farhanaz’s house after only three wrong turns!
Her sister met me downstairs. Talked with her sister and Farhanaz before lunch. Her husband and father went to Friday prayer during this time. Her sister has very similar interests to me. She admits she and Farhanaz are exact opposites, and I have to agree. How she compared the two of them made me laugh. She’s in her last year of high school but has been reporting for the Daily Star, a big English newspaper here, on underground music for the last 2 years! Right now she’s grounded and can’t go to shows, but after January she’ll be able to go with me. She told me of all the bands I HAVE to listen to.
Farhanaz and I just talked about NCSU, things here, language. It’s so great seeing her again. I’m very happy for her that she’s having a baby. Her father and mother came in before lunch and talked to them as well in Bengali.
Lunch was deliciously prepared, Farhanaz kept saying how bad her cooking is compared to what her mom does. I thought they both are excellent cooks, but she didn’t want to hear it, very modest.
After lunch we sat in the living room and just talked. Mostly in Bengali, which is still a big deal for me. She was very happy to hear me talk though. She really is a reference point. She knows where I was at in May, and is so impressed at how far I’ve come since then. It’s almost like instant improvement for her. She was beaming. I conversed with her dad, her, her cousin, her husband, and mom. Couldn’t resist teasing her a bit, about things she said or did back in the US…they laughed…she blushed. (pic: Farhanaz/me/Diya, her younger sis)

Then got ready for wedding. Went later than expected. Jayita was running late. Finally got the call to leave. It was at the Shooting Complex south of Gulshan 1, a Tk30 rickshaw ride. The downstairs room was set up with tons of chairs facing a stage with an awning. Under the awning sat the bride, beautifully dressed, and with lots of jewelery. Jayita said this is a relatively quieter night, where both sides of the families get to meet the bride and groom, since the past few nights have restricted attendees, and the bride and groom don’t attend the other side’s holud. The upstairs is where we ate. The majority of people ate a first sitting. Then, a few of us ate after, and at the head table. I was there along with Jayita, her uncle Ayon and his friends, the bride and groom. It’s a head table, but at the same time it’s not. Not many people were left upstairs by the time we all ate. So, at that point, weren't really "head" of anything. (pics: bride and a collection of female family members, myself with Ayon and friends, dinner floor, Jayita's cousin Sreyoshi/me, at head table for dinner, bride and groom under awning)

7^th-4th in Dhaka 10/20

Today Erin, Megan, and our teacher Farah left in the morning to head to two Durga Puja celebrations.
It was neat to see the sculptures of Durga destroying the demon Mahishasur, and her children on her sides. The sculptures are made every year brand new because on the third day of the festival they are thrown into the river/lake. Durga is the most important goddess to the Bengali Hindus, and thus this is their biggest holiday, a 3 day event where going to the shrine to pray in front of Durga is very important.

The first shrine we went to was in one of the city’s parks. They had a huge tent covering the permanent shrine and the Puja shrine. About fifty people were there praying, listening to a man in front of the shrine reciting from a text. One younger guy there came up to me and talked to us about what was happening. (pics: tent at park for Durga Puja, Durga Puja shrine)

We went Dhakeshwari temple after. This is the temple I went to earlier in my stay, and it was relatively empty then. Now it was packed. The sculptures we saw them working on last time were now complete and on the shrine. There were tons of food vendors, and people selling Hinduism related items. Various trinkets, bindis, jewelery, and incense. We watched people give flowers to the Puja shrine which was outside the main temple complex. Then into the main temple we went. Men and women were separated, so I was now alone. But both got to up to the shrine, just men on the left, women on the right. Offerings were being made to the main Dhakeshwari shrine. People were everywhere. Drums were played inside this temple. Lots of incense was burning. People were getting cream colored bindis drawn on their forehead. (pics: Durga Puja shrine at Dhakeshwari temple, vendors with items for Durga Puja, Dhakeshwari temple filled with celebrators, myself there.)

After getting some street food, we headed back home.

In the evening I hung out with Jayita for a bit. Then later hung out with Megan, getting dinner at Café Mango.

7^th-5th in Dhaka 10/21

Glad to see the Wolfpack win, and sad to see the Indians lose.

Met Megan in the evening to have some tea and a snack from a small tea shack near our house. We talked on the streets. Later came over for dinner.

One thing I’ve been meaning to write about is that the trucks here all painted bright colors. I don’t know why. But bright blue, green, yellow, pink, red, orange adorn all the trucks. The 18-wheelers aren’t, but the dump trucks, tankers, and bed trucks are. (pics: examples of colorful trucks.)

7^th-6th in Dhaka 10/22

Today I went to Dr. Haque’s office after class. We were meeting to go over the GPS stuff again. Took a bus to get there. Only Tk8…if I had taken a rickshaw, it would’ve been at least Tk40. I love these buses.

The rickshaw I took to go to Aarong afterwards brought me far from where I had specified. So I start walking down the road to Aarong. I stop in some sport stores along this road to see how much a rowing machine cost. Way too much. $200 at least, and I wouldn’t be keeping it…so not worth it. And not Concept2, some other lame brand…

At one of the stores though, I asked about the prices of some weights, a badminton racket, and a jump rope. Asked where I can play badminton around here. Guy told me most people will just gather into groups at parks and play. Cool. I’ll buy a racket later. But I bought the jump rope, a nice simple way to get cardio workout in my bedroom. Real cheap too!

Walked the rest of the way to Aarong. The store sells only Bangladeshi made items. It's supported by BRAC, an organization involved in sustainable human development. Thus by buying from there, you know the clothing supports Bangladesh. And its fashionable too, thus hip? I bought a panjabi and 2 fotua for less than the price than my last panjabi.

On the way there I got splashed by a bus going through a puddle. My sandals and lower part of pants got wet. But instead of being laughed at by the doorman and passengers, they said sorry. I was surprised, I would’ve laughed at myself. I didn’t mind. It happens.

Time Out for dinner, a courtyard which is surrounded by five restaurants. You can order from any of them, and the waiters bring it to you from there. Only of the restaurants is called Time Out, but people associate the complex with that one. I got some Mexican food, glad to have some. Nachos and a burrito. A South Asian version of these central American foods. Not so much cheese either. Bread more of the South Asian variety.
Megan came by later, and joined me to eat. Then Tamzid and Nashad came by. We all had dinner and had a good time chatting. Glad we were all hanging out.

A server offered us the Paan menu. Paan is a leaf from a certain tree, and you chew it, and it has a flavor, and will help your digestion. It typically comes wrapped around some sweet stuff, betel nut, and spices. You put the whole thing in your mouth, its big, and chew it. Tamzid and Megan encouraged me, and would join too. Nashad said it was gross. Well I guess I have to try it at least once. I did, and it was a bit too much for me. A lot to put in your mouth at once. Very interesting flavor. You chew it, “like a cow”, said Nashad grimacing. I did, you chew for at least 10 minutes. Swallowing slowly. Not sure if I’d do it again.

7^th-7th in Dhaka 10/23

Went to Aktel to register my phone. This is necessary because apparently they will (might) deactivate your phone number if you don’t register it. It requires passport size photos, valid id (for me passport) and a copy of your passport (which I had to before getting there)

Registered, and let Shuvon (who works for Aktel) know I was downstairs from his office, hoping I could go up to see him and where he works. But he wouldn’t reply to texts. So after grabbing some ice cream and finding ways to stall, I headed to Gulshan 2…well he called back when I was almost back so I turned around.
It was good though. In his office for about an hour. Met his coworkers, and he showed me pictures from his most recent trip.

Picked up my pants from the tailor and my dry cleaning. Well actually left the pants there so they can move the button to the left pocket where I like to keep my wallet.

For dinner all the Fulbrighters currently here met at Harvey’s house, he is the one in charge of us here. It was a good dinner. Mexican fajitas and tacos…lots of cheese…no guacamole, dang… but I brought some salsa home for my morning eggs. It was fun to talk to all the different embassy folks who were very interested in us. Nafisa and I had a fun time talking. Also talked to Harvey’s wife about football (Wisconsin Badger), our states, etc.

And identified today where my Dad Vail wristband will break. There are two plastic layers on the bracelet, and the inner one, against my skin, has a crack that goes the full width. The outer side’s crack is growing, from both ends. It’s only a matter of days. I circled it, so I can watch the progression of the crack, and to say,“I called it” later on. (pic: Dad Vail wristband and where it will break.)