Fletcher Nostalgia

I got together with two Fletcher friends today at Coffee World, another hip and trendy chain in Dhaka. It was great. We reminisced about Fletcher and the good times we all had living in Blakeley, Fletcher's grad student dorm. I met both of them my first week at Fletcher and one of them I met while sitting next to him at a Red Sox game--I had to explain the rules of baseball to the best of my ability, which was surprisingly waaaay more difficult than I thought. I also reminded my friend Ashirul that it took me FOREVER to remember his name, which is pretty atypical for me. But I literally had to ask him his name four or five times. This is a common occurrence for me here and while I'm getting better at remembering names as I become more familiar with them, it's still going to take me longer than it did for me to remember Balkan names. Guess I just have to keep trying.

My friend Ashirul is from Dhaka, but lives in the States so is just visiting his family for a couple months. My other friend Jabed works at the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry. They were of course typically Bangladeshi, with Ash picking up the check for us and Jabed offering to take me on a personal tour of Dhaka whenever I'd like. Such hospitality. Jabed and I will soon try to plan a Fletcher get-together for those of us living and working in Dhaka.

Our other Fletcher friend in Dhaka couldn't get together tonight. But she has also been amazing about showing me around Dhaka. Nermeen took me Eid shopping last week and she and her husband Kamal earlier treated me to a very nice dinner.

You should check out the company that Kamal founded--Cell Bazaar. It's kind of like the Bangladeshi version of Craigslist, except people use their cell phones to buy and sell goods. Like many developing countries, Bangladesh has skipped a technological step. Most people have never had a land line phone, but millions now have cell phones. Grameenphone is probably the most popular (at least anecdotally). You can find people selling i-pods, but more commonly people sell goods like rice, potatoes and dal (lentils).

While this get together was probably the highlight of my week, life in Dhaka is still going well. I spent the rest of my Eid holiday weekend playing squash at the American Club (I am slowly, but surely getting better...at least that's what my marker, Syeed, tells me.), swimming at the American School, eating ice cream at the Westin and getting a facial at Avera, one of the many spas in town. Rough life I'm leading here in Dhaka. Which is one of the reasons it bothers me so much when I hear Westerns complaining about how much they don't like it here. Of course there are things to gripe about and believe me, I'm sure I'll do my share, but really, life here is pretty good and I don't have too many complaints.

And for now, I'll leave you with one of my latest favorite pictures from Dhaka. It's amazing the things you see people carry on rickshaws or CNG's. I just wish I could capture more of these crazy photos (and wish this one was bigger--still trying to figure out how to edit photos on the computer).