Archive for the ‘Bangladeshi Village’ category

A *Failed* Journey Without Mobile And Money

January 30th, 2010

As I planned to spend 7 days without mobile and money, literally failed to maintain it. I was truly determined and well I still think it’s very much possible. Something went wrong and emergencies come first right. So I gave up…coming to how I gave up but let me tell you how I started. As I said in my previous blog that I would write down everyday how I spent the day eh…following was my first day and I couldn’t manage time to write on 2nd day and well failed on 3rd day…

Jan 26 01:13 AM : Today was my first day of “without mobile and money” life. I walked to my office and came back home same way. Had a feelings that I could do it everyday without taking any rickshaw and walking in the morning was nice but again after getting home I realized my laptop had much weight that I didn’t notice before. That’s it, I didn’t face any problem on first day…

That was my first day writing. On second day I started feeling pressure for cellphone. I was receiving emails from my friend, ex-colleagues to open the cell or why my cell was off. I kept replaying that im always online so please email me for any kind of need. Some of them came online and talked to me…so it worked somehow…

BUT, main problem occurred on 3rd day evening when I received an email from my younger brother like “grandmother is in comma, they have been calling you….” I wasn’t prepared for that at all. My mobile was locked at home and I didn’t even have any body’s number memorized. Most stupid thing happened when I asked my wife Tamanna (online) for my mom’s number so that at least I could call. I know im a moron…i can’t even memorize my mom’s number!

So ran to my home here in Uttara and turned ON my cell and talked to my mom first to know about the situation. Plan was to leave dhaka right away for Sunamganj if she was still in comma. Then I talked to my cousins and them in my dada bari to know everything in details. Thank god she was better than the night before….

And, when I turned ON my cell I found lots of miss called alerts and few of them were called more than 15 times. I realized how people suffered for this and how that was important as they had to call more than 15 times! Whoa…realized that im more dependent on cell phone than money…i didn’t have any problem for that at all. I loved walking to office and hopefully from now on I will walk to my office everyday.

But one thing I asked myself, how urban people lived away from their families when there weren’t any cellphones, laptop, email etc and their grandmother was in comma?

Hmm…we must be thankful to these electronics devices, certainly it’s making our life easier (and complex too).

Anyways, am I gonna try to experiment it again? Yes i’m! I cannot fail and I know its very much possible. By the way, I have also noticed how my friends think I can’t live without INTERNET! So that will be my second challenge for sure….

Thank you!

Recall: 2009

December 25th, 2009

Couple days ago I was reading my last blog in 2008 and became a little bit nostalgic. One year is not a long time, but lot’s of things can happen in one year. Saying it again, never had such expectation out of time but I must say 2009 was the BEST year of my life so far! Because, I got married in 2009! I got married to love of my life in July, 22nd :)

Spoke at tech seminar arranged by PhpExperts group, and that was a great day for me to be in front of lots of talents from Bangladesh. It helped me to understand this local community I know and I love from my heart. I met lot’s of people I know from twitter/friendfeed/facebook but never saw them before. Though I couldn’t meet all the guys I know…and well, it helped me to get closer with some talent speakers , whoa!

Working at Trippertlabs is always fun, what a year it has been for this company! Working on some exciting iPhone projects and after a couple days you see them in the top list at iPhone app store, how does it feel? I can remember the weekend we worked on some iPhone quiz applications and one of them went to #1 position in the free app category. This excitement continued through out the year dude but out of all these biggest news from my company was acquisitions by Playdom!

“Amra Positive” idea came from some frustrations and interest to learn python. This is a personal project I developed for local community to share all good news within 150 chars. I was glad to receive some positive response from all kinds of users. I hope to upgrade this app soon on spare time but I will love to get more feedback and advices from you guys :)

What else? There are lots of things to recall from 2009. What an eventful year! But let’s not be more geek on this…let me remind my promise that I wanted to have Eid-ul-adha with my village people. This is one of the place I truly love to be. This year wasn’t any exception. As usual I had my Eid with my village people with some different moments….

What’s gonna happen in 2010? There’s gonna be lots of changes in my life, Uhm, but no guess…as I always say, wake up every morning and do what you enjoy the most…i will be keep following this theory by keeping very less expectations….

Srimangal Tea Resort – One of the Coolest Tourist Places in Bangladesh

November 1st, 2009

Other day a lady called me in the morning to know some information about “Rangamati”. In my head i was like what the hell? Is she calling the right person? As she woke me up in early morning so i felt kinda drunk…i tried to hear and then i realized, i wrote a blog on rangamati trip and this is how she found me. Then i actually realized, how less information we have on web about our beautiful country. So here i come…whenever i visit some nice places here in Bangladesh i will always write about it and guess what? Today, i came to Dhaka after an awesome trip to srimangal tea resort. This is one of the best place i have ever visited….i’m going to let you know about my experience and my thoughts will be placed here. BUT if you already visited any resort in srimangal you won’t find anything new here :)

What is sooooooo good about Srinmangal tea resort? 
  • Surrounded by nature, pin drop silent place! 
  • No pollutions! 
  • Secured and safe….
  • 7 color/layer tea – Taste is really good but what makes it so different is the innovation behind it. I kept asking guys how the hell they kept these layers in the tea? It’s a mystery and they won’t let people know about it. 
  • One of the best honeymoon place in Bangladesh (i can’t believe i didn’t go there after my wedding)
  • Swimming pool – from where you can view the full sky. Imagine you are there in the full moon night?
  • Tennis court – ya, a nice tennis court but don’t forget to bring your own racket and tennis ball ;)
  • Table tennis – play it for free! 
  • No bugging, no too much people gathering.
  • Madhobpur lake – don’t miss to visit. Around 20 mins drive from the  tea resort and i can tell you that you will LOVE to drive through the tress. The side view is amazing on the way to madhobpur lake. And the lake itself? you will love to spend time there. 
  • and more….let me not tell you the rest here…hmm?
But what about the cost? 
  • Meal – per person 250-300 Taka
  • If you hire a “Bungalow” then for 2 person they will charge 2,000 Taka per night. One bed for 2 persons. But once you hired a Bungalow, you will get veranda from where you can watch a nice tea garden! a kitchen, car parking place and lot other facilities. What else you need for 2,000 Taka?

Update : Photos from our Srimangal Tea Resort Trip http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=119901&id=579152077&l=8bc8128c3a

What Are You Doing?

September 11th, 2009

Sometimes, I wonder how many developers are working behind this question. How many dollars being invested to get this answer. Not only developers but some psychiatrists as well, probably? I don’t know who started this status system first, was it Facebook? Or someone else? anyways, Facebook was really modest about this status updates from the beginning. They didn’t give much concentration on it at the beginning and so far I can recall people used to update their status when there was something “really” important and something that makes sense. Something educational, something that helps others?

And then we moved. New tools came, Twitter became extremely popular with some simple ideas. There were lot’s of new tools launched following Twitter’s success. FriendFeed was one of them, though their concept was a little bit different than twitter. We people got too many options to answer “what’s on our mind” or “what we are doing”.


Not only, we have options to choose where we want to say what we are doing but also we have so many third party softwares whos making our life even easier. We can say something on LinkedIn and it can come to Twitter, Friendfeed and then Facebook. We can use such tool like SocialToo that allows to update status to multiple places. Same goes for Desktop client TweetDeck, Seesmic or web client Brizzly. And then, Junal becomes really busy when one of them updates their software and adds new feature.

What we usually answer to these status taker? A lot of things! And almost 90% of them are about ourselves. What we like and what we don’t like. What we have and what we don’t have…and then a big sigh! We are still not satisfied…..


But are we not being social? Wait, let me correct….we are being “technically” social. And I guess we are doing 110% on this part. I have been keeping myself busy with this so called “Technically Social” world for last 2/3 years. No, I don’t have regret for what I have been doing or what I have done. But I regretted few days ago, after my marriage, when I realized that I was actually in a different world. When I had to visit to my relatives house with my wife, I felt there was something calling me back. I don’t blame myself for being too much addicted with this technical world but I do blame myself for not being in keep in touch with the actual society. I can remember, when I arrived in my village, how people received us. How our present gave them fun. My grandmother is about 105 years old. Every years she waits for me to see. But Junal never can manage time for her – sigh! I regret.


This year when I went to my village with my wife Tamanna, My grandmother was really happy. I saw a smile that I will never forget. She has nothing to do except sitting idle and counting the day she has in this beautiful world. I wonder how many people ask her what she is doing? She doesn’t have much options there, unfortunately.

One the way to my village

One the way to my village

It makes me feel how selfish I’m. I don’t have much time for my relatives to visit them. Lots of my village people are coming in my mind right now. People who never get a chance to answer to someone about their life, their problems, their needs or anything…. but these people never complain! Still they smile, smile with 100% happiness when we people got 100+ complains about our life even after getting lots of facilities.

My grandmother, 105 years old!

My grandmother, 105 years old!

I know, I wouldn’t meet these much relatives if I didn’t get married recently. I have this realization that we are totally in a different world. A world that makes us more selfish, more self centric and we are getting out of actual society day by day.

I don't know what they made for us, but that was very sweet of them

I don't know what they made for us, but that was very sweet of them

Do we have time to give ourselves sometimes to realize if we are really getting out of our actual society?

Personally, I have decided to meet this actual society often to ask “What are you doing”.

Nuruzzaman’s Smile!

February 1st, 2009

Nuruzzaman was cook for our house. We 5 friends and him were at that time, and well he left us 2 years ago for a personal reason. I’m coming to his leaving reason, but before that I would like to go back at his history with us.

I figured out, he was totally a different guy. Different in a scenes that, he was around 15/16 years old with no academic education, but he was even smarter than some educated people. I liked the way he was spending his life. He used to smile all the time, doesn’t matter how hard we were at him, his smile was all that used to keep us calm at the end. He had no fear because he was honest. His spear time was all about chilling. He made some friends here in local resistance and most of them were his seniors.

He always used to sit besides of me while I’m working on computer. Somehow I liked it, I used to talk to him about his local life and how they have child marriage in his area (Noakhali).

Maybe, after 6-8 months we noticed that he found a girl who was also a cook of the next door. We didn’t care, indeed we pretended that we were not seeing anything. By the way, did I tell you he was really brave? Well, he was really brave (in a good way). He used to pretend that there wasn’t any girl who was talking to him through the windows! At a time, it turned into a serious relationship. But still we didn’t think it would go that further. One day, he came to us to say sorry that he was leaving. Though he gave us his replacement – Reason? That was his personal, and later we knew that he ran away with that girl and got married!

Anyways, so he got married at 18! and I guess she was 16. He had to go through a lot of troubles after his marriage. Managing his family and the girl’s family. He came back to Dhaka and in last 2 years he worked in cinema hall, groceries store, laundry store, office and finally in a garments.

Today, Nuruzzaman is here with me! He has come here to stay the night and next morning he’s going to join a prayers (estema) here in Tongi. I had this long conversation with him, how he spent his last 2 years. Oh by the way, he has a daughter now!

Nuruzzaman was telling me about his trouble life one by one and how he faced it! I was gazing at him just to see his upset face as he was telling me about his struggle life. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any regret or emotions on his face. He kept smiling and smiling. Seems like that’s life why should I complain?

Certainly, Nuruzzaman faced more reality than me in last 2 years! And after all these he has this amazing smile alive, he has no complain about this world, he’s happy person, and he has a plan for his daughter. Hes saving money just for his wife and daughter’s future.

Nuruzzaman's Amazing Smile

Nuruzzaman's Amazing Smile

…. I have learned something from Nuruzzaman. Thank you Nuruzzaman!

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