Category: Bangladesh

Category Archives for Bangladesh

Mobile Operators are collecting funds for Sidr victims.

Six mobile operators of Bangladesh are collecting funds for helping the Sidr victims. Aktel, Banglalink, Grameenphone, Citycell, Tele-Talk and Warid have requested their customers to helping them raising the fund by sms. The deadline of this proceeding is November 30, 2007. All the money will be then deposited to the Chief Adviser’s Relief and Welfare Fund.

For donating money in the the fund customers have to send the word HELP from his/her mobile phone as sms to the number 1010. By sending each sms, customer will provide 10tk for the fund. Remember Last date of sending sms is November 30, 2007.

Please… Help the Sidr victims.

Dear Readers,

All of us all ready knew what Sidr actually have done to our country and our people. Over 2000 people were killed. People who had survived, have lost their families and shelter. They are out of food and cloth. Even they don’t have a piece of cloth for wrapping the dead bodies. Schools and Hospitals were blown away. They don’t have enough medical treatment facilities. How can we call it LIVING. It is not so much different from the DEATH. In the past, whenever Bangladesh faced any natural calamities, our people always extended their hands for the help of the victims. Why can’t we do this once again? Why doesn’t Humanity win once again?

For reaching the Sidr victims, I tried to gather information about ways you can help them. I tried to list them all in this post. If I miss any please don’t hesitate to mention that in the Comment Box.

Chief Adviser’s Relief and Welfare Fund

Any one can donate money to this fund to help the victims. You can also donate relief goods here. For more information please visit the site.

Control Room of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management

If you want to reach the affected areas, you can contact this control room to know which area is deprived from the relief help. For more information visit the site.

International Help Funds

You can also make your donation through the following sites:

National Endeavours

One of the Bangla blogging engine, Somewhere in… blog started a campaign to collect relief funds for the Sidr victims. They named this effort as Jagoron Campaign. This is a sms based help fund. If you send only one SMS from your mobile phone written “save” and send it to 5455 from any Bangladeshi mobile operator then corporate sponsors will add their donation for “save the childen fund relief for Sidr victim people”.

The following process represent the whole process how the Jagoron Campaign works.

 

 

Banglalink, one of the mobile operators of Bangladesh, take initiatives to raise funds for the Sidr victims. From any Banglalink mobile phone number, you can send SMS and donate taka ten with every SMS. For this you need to type ‘HELP’ in the messege text and send to 1010. Each time, tk 10/- (vat included) will be cut from the customer’s account and the full money will be donated to the Chief Advisor’s Relief Fund.

Can’t we make a little contribution to any of the above funds? Our little help can make a face enliven. If we don’t help ourselves who’ll be there to help us!

Hurricane Sidr: Ciy life collapsed

Sidr, the largest cyclone in the history of Bangladesh, ripped through the southwestern coast late Thursday. It was a nightmare for Bangladesh. Not only the coastal area but also the city life was tremendously disturbed. Sidr caused the National Power Grid to collapse completely yesterday morning, which ultimately triggered a knock-on effect on piped water supplies, telecommunication and gas filling station operations.

This hurricane actually hit the coastal area of Bangladesh. But the capital Dhaka was also fallen within it’s grasp. After the thursday midnight, the gusty wind became more furious with heavy rain. At 7 o’clock of Friday morning, the electricity supply was terminated. In evening when I went outside home, I saw the actual catastrophe that was accomplished by Sidr.

On Friday evening, me and my mom went to Motijhil for joining a Doa Mahfil of one of my late relative. I could not refill the CNG cylinder of our car as all the Gas Station was remain closed. So I had to switch the engine in Octane mode. The whole city was tremendously disturbed by the storm. When I was crossing the Rajarbag Police Line, I had to drive very carefully as large trees were uprooted and flattened on the street blocking the traffic. Some people were trying to remove the trees by sawing them, as it is difficult to carry those large trees to other places.

This picture has been taken from the Farmgate area on Friday night. as there were no neon signs, lighted billboards or streetlights for the Power Grid failure; only the headlights of the vehicles glimmered on the street.

Photo Courtesy: The Daily Star

 

Electronic Communication system came to a halt as there is no electricity supply. Even the internet was disrupted! The cellular telecommunication was very much sporadic, as sometimes network coverage was totally blank. After evening, I could not contact anyone using my mobile phone as the network strength indicator of my phone had suddenly disappeared! The hurricane affected the National Power Grid heavily. Today when I am writing this post, still there is a discontinuous supply of electricity.

As I mentioned earlier, it was the most robust cyclone in the history of Bangladesh. It was stronger than those of 1970’s and 1991’s. Still the damages could not be measured properly, but it is sure that it will be an enormous amount.

Please… be at the side of the victims. They need your help.

November Rain.

It’s November, the beginning of the winter. The curtain of fogs are just waiting to be fallen. Every morning is becoming chiller than the previous day. Sun rises in late everyday. Weather is becoming more lifeless. The trumpet of winter is heard from a distance. All arrangements has been set, just waiting for the arrival of winter. Countdown has been begun. But all of a sudden, like an adroit warrior, Rain just swept away all the preparations. This November rain took place in this afternoon, making a sudden pause to the urban life.

From the very morning, the sky was bright with a shiny winter sun. After a few hours, the sky began to change it’s look, turning into gloomy grey from gleeful combination of blue and white. Then it changed into dark grey at afternoon. I was on a rickshaw at that time. I could smell the scent of rain in the wind. After a few minutes, large chill drops of rain began to trickle upon me. Not a bad feeling. It was comfortable until the smaller drops started to bite. I pulled the rickshaw-hood to cover myself.

Then all of a sudden, it turned into a heavy rainfall. People were running to and fro for shelters. I was half soaked. I could not see the front view, all nature suddenly became blur. Dhanmondi Lake was looking like a artistic masterpiece. The pulsating lake surface together with a down poured nature made a picturesque view. The streets were shinning with the bright headlight and red taillight of the cars. A few minutes later, the rain had stopped. But it left it’s muddy signature on the street.

I am an engineer, not a poet. Engineers were claimed to have a solid mechanical heart and were far from realizing the beauty of nature. And I am not opposing this hypothesis. But sometime those mechanical organ feels flabby inside and can be allured by the beauty that is molded by the Almighty Himself. And I am not so much different from them!

One year in AUST!

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I should have written this article earlier, due to my busy life I couldn’t find out spare times to write it all! Actually I also forgot the date of my joining in Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology as a Lecturer. Last Wednesday Shorif Bhai, one of my colleagues, reminded me the anniversary. I was amused at that time by thinking that how fast time flows.

After graduating from IUT on September 2006, I joined in AUST on October 2006. Frankly speaking I didn’t have any desire for the teaching life. While I was student, I used to dream of various engineering jobs but not the teaching. Even “I can be a teacher” – i never thought this line in my life; but now I am a teacher… a teacher of a prestigious private engineering university of Bangladesh…who could’ve think of that?

I’m still confused whether I am enjoying my job! But I found my colleagues very helpful and approachable. I always used to think that teachers are always boring, they don’t have any fun in their life or at least what they call fun is not fun to us. My this type of idea was punctured when I got in touch with my colleagues. In our teacher’s common room (Rm#213) of EEE department , there is always an euphoric environment all through. Bobby bhai and Ferdous bhai is the center of any gossip. Sometimes Jahangir bhai also joined there. Shorif bhai is one of my closest colleagues though he is 2 years senior to me. He is very friendly and jolly by nature. Biplob Bhai, Minhaz Bhai, Mushfiq Bhai, Mizan Bhai – all are very much helpful in any condition. Monju bhai is a sweet guy who likes laugh and is popular for his pinching people. He is a constant supply of fun. By the way I am the junior most lecturer in our department still now. I’ve Kaiser Habib, not junior to me but my batch-mate. So we two are the most junior teachers in the whole university!

I almost forgot to mention Momo aapu and Sadia Aapu. We call them “Sokhi” which means something like “friends forever” in Bangla. They sit together, eat together, take a break together, gossip together, take labs together, even they had the record of being sick for almost a week together! Oh… there is one difference between them, they live in different places, one in Mohammadpur and another one in Uttora. By the way, I like Momo aapu, because she never says “no” when I ask her for a lunch after invigilating her class tests.

I’ve got some students who greeted me on EID day. I was very much surprised at that, because I could not remember that I greeted any of my teachers on Eid day. By the way, I do have some potential students, who are very mush eager to prove themselves.

Another year of my AUST life has begun. Don’t know what is in future, but to my horrible, I think, slowly I am gonna like this profession! If it happens then history of mankind will be never aware of a dazzling Engineer in Electrical domain (that means me 😀 ).

Campaign for Cox's Bazaar and ShundorBon.

Hope you all know that the list of “New 7 wonders of the world” has been declared. Many of us voted his/her choices in the website as we all have been listening about the Great 7 wonders of the world since our childhood. The “New 7 wonder foundation” has started another campaign, named “New 7 wonders of Nature”. Can’t we all try to nominate something from our own, this time?

May be we dont have something like Great Wall or Taazmohol…but this time, we have our own assets…”Cox’s Bazaar” and “Shundor Bon” and may be “Raangamaati”or “St. Martin’s Island”. Can’t we spend few minutes from our valuable time to nominate these greatest natural sites from our own Bangladesh? I’ve already nominated the following sites of Bangladesh for “The Seven Natural Wonders” with the spelling and category written below. Please maintain the same spelling for the rest of nomination.

SITE                     CATEGORY             COUNTRY
Cox’s Bazaar         Coastline                     Bangladesh
Shundor Bon         Forest                         Bangladesh

For nomination please visit the site of New 7 wonder foundation.

Please, convey this message to others so that more and more nomination from Bangladesh can be posted. Please use the campaign poster in your blog or website. So that more people can participate.