My Life – Page 4 – Adnan's Den

Nostalgia

That was March 2, 2000. I went for my SSC exam, for the first time (and last time ever 🙂 ). That was a big step for me in my life. I was appeared in some kind of real exam which would left its’ ever lasting effect in my whole life. Actually that was not my first time public exam, as I had appeared in government scholarship exams, both primary and junior program. I was used to sit for public exams. But those were not as vast as SSC exam. Just imagine millions of students are attending the same exam in same day through out whole Bangladesh! That’s a tremendous feeling!

In our family there is tradition of giving gifts as well as blessings to the SSC candidate from the elders. Last week before the exam, our house was almost remained packed with the guests who came to visit me. And my duty was to ask them to pray for me for the upcoming exam. Some close relatives came along with sweets and cakes (pithaa). I got a huge amount of gifts, to which I didn’t get much time to pay attention (’cause exam was knocking at door). My all senses were collapsed by the exam. What a cherished memory that was!

Those days were again came back to my memory now a days because of my little sister. My sis is going to appear SSC exam this year, to be precisely on March 27. Exactly one week is remaining. And like my days, well wishers and relatives are begun to swarm our home to visit her. My sis is already in little bit panic about the exam. She is a good student but always is in tense during any kind of exam. Now she is completing her last-moment preparations.

Please pray to the Almighty for her colossal success in the upcoming SSC exam. May Allah help her in this regard.

Exam Anecdotes

The Fall 2007 semester of AUST came to an end with the last exam today. I am not a student anymore but still the end of the exam is a joy for me. No more early rising for the exam hall, no more invigilating, no more boring time spending. While I was a student, time passed away so quickly in the exam hall that we always wrestled with the limited time. But as an invigilator that limited time becomes endless until the final bell was rung. So for time passing I always try to observe each of the students very carefully. Some times this become fun as they do some peculiar tasks. This post is actually about those peculiar tasks of the students that I’ve observed during the whole Fall 2007 final exam.

I am not depicting any name, department or student identification number of the students, so that they can’t be recognized.

One student always used to bring 8 pencils, 5 pens, three erasers, two rulers (scale) and two calculators. He was very much cautious about the backup!
Another boy who has a pony-tailed hair, always wrapped his pony-tail with a rubber band when entered the hall and unwrapped it when his exam was over!
One boy had a smiling face who was always smiling during the exam, even when he was writing in the exam scripts.
A girl was there who did not write even the half of the whole answer scripts but stayed the hall until the last minute!
Another boy who always took on an average 10 pages in every exam! Some times it became difficult to staple his main script along with the extra pages.
All the students of one of the particular semester of a particular department was completely absent from the exam except for the very last day!
Another student was always singing in a whispering voice while writing in the script!

Get-together: After a long span…

I entered home at 10:30pm as I was attended Raihan’s walima [wedding reception] tonight. It is quite unnatural for me to be out of home after at most 9:30 pm. But tonight was special. I’ve met all of my close friends on that occasion which costs me my time. It was quite enjoyable. I’ve almost forgotten when I last met with Sorpo (Sarfaraz), Fuad, Shoeb (Dada), Zubair, Shafayat, Shadid, Maruf (both Chiki and Kana), Sadiq, Zamil (Paachu) and others. Thanx Raihan for inviting all of us. Our after dinner adda was so much enjoyable that it often reminds me the adda of my IUT life. New addition in our get together is our several friend’s wives. As several has ended their bachelor life, they always come anywhere with their wives. Today was no exception either. Parvez and Hasnain brought their wives. Tanvir’s wife could not join us due to illness. As Adnan was not in Dhaka, he and his wife also were not present in the ceremony.

But we missed two of our great entertainers: Dipu and Miftah, who are always considered the nucleus of any adda. Dipu is in Bhutan and Miftah was in office. Never the less, our adda was quite entertaining. I don’t know when we’ll meet probably again, but today we all were returned to our IUT life. We forgot that some of us are faculty in universities or in various top corporates of country. We just talked like the immature students. If anyone listened to our conversation, he would just puzzled whether we are engineers or some stupid teenagers.

Life become monotonous. But some occasion reminds us that there is still those friends with whom once I’ve shared my life and who are always ready to help anytime. This relief some times works as anti-dotes in life. I am just waiting for the next get together, where all of us can again return to our past life, no matter how much time has been passed.

Ekushey Boi Mela 2008

Today I went to Bangla Academy Boimela. For the last two weeks I just sorted out a list of books that has to be bought from the fair. As usual my sister helped me in that case. I felt the same emotion that I felt every year in boimela when I entered the entrance gate. All the publishing houses were colored with colorful covers of new as well as old books. It was just like a festival, a festival of books. All the renowned publishing houses were crowded with people as they publishes most of the books written by popular writers. I am one of the fan of Muhammad Zafar Iqbal. And as usual I bought his latest sci-fi and teen-adventure books. I’ve been searching for some old but appealing books that I’ve searched in many places. This time in Bishwashahittya Kendro, I got three of them. These are “Jokey’r Dhon” by Hemendra, “Chadey’r Pahaar” by Bivutybhushon and a story collection of Porshuram.

Unlike other years, Dipu was not with me this year in Boi Mela. Last several years, we just spent hours after hours in Boimela by just comparing the books. Dipu has a good taste in transliterated books. Some times we just bought books by seeing it’s front and rear cover. If we didn’t like the book then we just blaming the author for such a book 🙂 !

I was disappointed by the UNMAD stall. UNMAD is a cartoon magazine like MAD. Every year they brought some really hilarious funny posters and stickers which were sold like hot cakes. But today I didn’t find anything like that in their stall except some copies of their magazine issues.

What ever, I don’t have so much time to write this post, because more than fifteen fresh books are waiting for me. And I can assure that for a few dayz, I’ll not be available in my blog for the same purpose. 🙂

Busy Bee!

I am feeling like a busy bee. Life suddenly becomes busier now a days. It is the end of the Fall 2007 semester in AUST and the preparatory leave for the students to prepare themselves for the upcoming semester final has been started. all the teachers are doing actually nothing in this leave. But my fate is somewhat different! I got the job of planning the class schedule for the next semester (Spring 2008) for EEE department. Planning the class schedule of EEE department of AUST is considered the most cumbersome job. Because of the large body of both students and faculties. Moreover, next semester AUST is going to it’s permanent campus in Tejgaon. And in new building, EEE department is deprived of sufficient number of rooms. Yeah, I used the word DEPRIVE. Because ever since I joined in AUST, I saw that EEE department is not treated as it should be like other departments. New phenomena is Class room shortage in new building. AUST may provide only 8 (or less) rooms for the upcoming semester to EEE department to accommodate approximately 1200 students! I don’t know how I’ll finish the schedule. If the schedule is finished somehow students’ll not get rest between the classes or labs. It’s gonna be a tight schedule for the EEE department in the Spring 2008!

And offcourse thanks to Ahmed bhai who’ve helped me very much in setting question papers for the awaiting exam. Next semester some of our colleagues will leave AUST. Already Assistant professor Rafiul Hossain has left AUST for UIU. He is really one of the fewest people who are expert in VLSI. Two of our lecturers Ms. Sadia Moriam and Mr. Ziaur Rahman will leave AUST at the end of this February. Another lecturer Mrs. Nazia Farha will take leave for the next whole semester. I’ll really miss them.

First experience of Windows Vista

I’ve just installed Windows Vista Ultimatum in my laptop. I got the copy from Minhaz Bhai. Then I took it just for test, as I’ve never experienced Vista before. When I first installed it, I was so much puzzled about the tools, because it was little bit difficult for me to find out where the necessary tools were as it seemed a bit hazy to me. It has a stunning visual. But I am sure who are using KDE of Linux or UBUNTU, will not be amazed by seeing the visual feature. I’ve been using UBUNTU for the last few years, and I believe that Windows Vista has nothing special or unique features which are not in Linux.

I like the gadgets that appear on the right side of the desktop. Specially the RSS Feed gadget which I think is very useful. Start menu becomes more clumsy as the sub-menus open within the main menu. The main drawback that I’ve noticed is that the driver’s scarcity. My laptop’s blue-tooth functionality couldn’t be installed for some dumb security reason! Every time I wanted to install the device from the original CD provided by DELL with my laptop, it shows the security center message, which in turns terminate the whole installation process.

Windows Vista requires more than 9 GB memory space and minimum 1 GB of RAM. It’s a high requirement. UBUNTU with the same facilities requires only 2 GB memory space with a RAM of 256 MB. I don’t know whether other software will run in Vista or they will also be blocked for so called security systems. But in the first glimpse it could not win my heart which had done by Windows XP. My suggestion is that, if you’re buying new PC’s with Vista installed in it then it is ok, otherwise the unavailability of the drivers will be troublesome. So if you’re using Windows XP, I don’t think you should upgrade your PC only just for Vista.

The VALENTINE Love

The question What is love is very much common which does not have any definite explanation. For the centuries both the scientists and writers wasted their time to discover it’s nature. But to be true they couldn’t find a satisfactory explanation. So what’s happening is that people are never stop to fall in love. As Einstein once said, Gravitation can’t be held responsible for people falling in love. And as Bangladeshi people are not alien or something like that, love attacks them like the other human. But it affected them more. Because here people are sophisticated in nature and they actually don’t fall in love, they are just drowned!

When I was not admitted in school I used to know that love is harmful and not appropriate for children (like me!). And children are not allowed to do that noxious activity. It was only limited within the movie/drama hero n’ heroine – that I was convinced 🙂 . With that believe I was admitted to school. I was amazed to find out that my classmates are much advanced than me. They don’t hesitate to discuss which of our senior were engaged with whom! When I was in class six, I discovered that most of my friends has managed their girlfriends. I was talking of the year of 1995 and at that time a standard class five student had his/her girlfriend/boyfriend is quite advanced. By the way I was in a school where children from all the upper class family were studied, may be it was a reason of their advancement. And I was still in the same position as I was before entering school! One of the reason I guess was I was not that much smart and intelligent to charm anyone (I’ve not changed a little bit! My close friends still claim that I don’t have any chance to be smart or intellect) 🙂 . I passed out my school and still didn’t discover the meaning of love!

Then I admitted in College. By that time pupils were much advanced. Almost every body managed their partner (they called Soul-mate!) and kept dating after dating. And I was still the same, love could not bother me! After two years, I went to university and find the ultimate advanced lovers (!!) there, who had more than one Soul-mate; to be precisely Phone-mate (as most of the love-story confined within the mobile phones)! Some people there even had more than five mobile SIMs to handle more girlfriends. Some were multiplexing their timing slots to maintain all the girlfriends! To my horror I discovered that their Phone-mates were as same as them having numerous boyfriends. When I told them about this fact, they assured me that they knew the fact and this was the culture! I did not dare to remind them a famous saying of Victor Hugo. Hugo said A woman with one lover is an angel, two lover is a monster and three lover is a woman. May be they had replaced the word woman with human. Alas… I was the same stupid, didn’t know the modern life!

Continue reading The VALENTINE Love

Another February… Another Bookfair

Another February has come which announces the glorious history of our beloved mother tongue Bangla. Who can live without speaking in his mother language? Nobody. And we are the only nation who sacrificed to gain the right of speaking in Bangla. Rafiq, Salam, Jabbar, Barkat, Shafiur and many unknown sacrificed their lives on 21 February in 1952 as the law enforcers fired on processions demanding recognition of Bangla as one of the state languages. In 1997, the UN declared February 21 as the International Mother Language Day.

Click here to know more about 21st February and Bangla Language.

Another magnificent event of this month is the book fair which is widely known as “Omor Ekushey Boimela”. Bangla Academy has been organizing this book fair since 1972. For the whole February, this fair will be the common place for the writers and readers. Releasing new books and seminars on Bangla language is the common everyday event in the fair. Besides the seminars where keynote papers are presented and the Bangla Academy awards are distributed, the academy also organizes cultural programs and discussions every afternoon during the fair. The programs include musical and dance performances along with other forms of stage shows. But the main attraction is still the books, the fresh new books.

I always await for this book fair. Though I can buy book from nearby book shops, but I await the whole year for buying books from this fair. You can’t describe the fair scenario, it’s just great. People are crowded in the stalls, seeking favorite books, writers are busy with giving autographs on their newly released books, books are every where, the air is smelled with the scent of newly printed books. Last several years, in book fair, my closest friend Dipu was with me every time. But this time he is away from Bangladesh. Don’t know how I’ll enjoy book fair this time without him!

Hope like every year people will gather in book fair to celebrate the glorious 21st February. Proud to speak in Bangla.