A new three part series documentary on “Historical Places of Bangladesh” has recently been released in DVDs and its now available in Bangladesh. (Via Angelmorn)
Here is a trailer of the first part:
The first part covers the following landmarks:
From Dhaka Division: Ahsan Manzil, Lalbagh Fort, Dhakeswari Temple, Star Mosque and Sonargaon (Panam City, Bara Sardar Bari and the Sonakanda Fort).
From Rajshahi Division: Ramshagor Dighi, Kantajee’s Temple, Ksumba Mosque, Paharpur, Behula’s Nuptial House, Mohasthangarh and Puthia
Bangladesh is blessed and adorned with countless mesmerizing “sites and scenes” where nature has woven its beauty very intricately; not only in terms of natural beauty, but also in terms of historical land marks.
We decided to document the important sites all over Bangladesh and compile it on a series so that at least people know about them.
However, Internet is also a good resource of information. It archives your internet presence and tells a lot about you including how popular you are. See here, here and here for details.
In early 1992, 18-year-old Lia McCord got an offer she couldn’t refuse.: Go to Bangladesh, pick up some packages and return home to Texas with $20,000. Simple.
However, the packages were in fact heroin and her contact was violent and controlling. Following a botched escape from her hotel McCord was arrested at Zia International Airport in Dhaka with 7 lbs. of heroin strapped to her body. It was then that her descent into hell really began. She narrowly escaped the death penalty, but was sentenced to 30 years.
As a model prisoner, she came to the attention of Congressman Bill Richardson, who appealed to the President of Bangladesh. It was successful, and she was released in July 1996. She now lives and works near Washington DC.
Most interesting is the statistics of Asia, especially India & Bangladesh:
While India has about 60 million internet users only 200,000 of them use Facebook. Whereas about 100,000 Bangladeshis use Facebook out of a total number of internet users of only 500,000 (some claim it is 1 million). (Stat source ITU)
Here is a graph showing the growth of Bangladesh internet users (source):
According to the above stats every one among five Bangladeshi internet users has a Facebook account.
After the initial frustrations thanks to a local dealer I finally bought a notebook which could be customized to English version. I have never heard of MSI brand before but this baby looks great with widescreen and is well balanced with configuration at a competitive price. Only I found no webcam attached as advertised. Normal posting will resume shortly.
The recent City Corporation and Pourashava election has ended in Bangladesh successfully (except some reports of mismanagement). One limitation was that BNP boycotted the elections although some of their candidates ran independently. The election commission’s outlook was to make this election free from political party representations but the court has given a verdict against that only a few days ago. The European and American diplomats said that “they were impressed by the high turnout and efficient running of local elections” calling the polls “a step in the right direction ahead of December’s national polls”. Only recently I noticed a commendable effort from a Bangladesh based NGO (Shushashoner Jonnoy Nagorik -SHUJAN). They have a site in bangla called www.votebd.org which displays all the information of every Candidate who contested in the 4 City Corporaton and 9 Pourashava elections. This is a great resource for voters to decide who is the best candidate for them. The information available (even in pdf) are:
It seems like ages (actually about 10 days) when I last updated my blog. Well a series of unfortunate events unsettled my internet presence.
First it was the Google spam bot which identified my blog as a splog and locked it. It said if not proven otherwise they were going to delete this blog. It could be the bot or some people may have reported it as so.
I panicked first and tried to contact blogger.com. They only had an automated process of reporting that it is not a spam blog and said it will take them minimum 2 days to review it by a service personnel. After two days there was no update from them so even I created a mirror of this blog in case I lose this space.
In the midst of all these another shocking thing happened. The harddisk of my HP business notebook crashed. Luckily I had bought an external harddisk and have 80% of my data in backup. As far I reckon I have lost some important mail archives, updates of last month’s work and some important bookmarks among other things. I don’t have another PC here (mine is back in Dhaka) so I was disconnected. The notebook’s warranty period is over so replacing it here will cost much time and money. An expert said it may be the harddisk or the controller, in case of later it would take much time to replace.
I am trying to get a new notebook. But now I face another challenge. All the notebooks sold here have German language version of OS pre-installed (most of the offers have Windows Vista) and comes with German keyboard. I need to buy the Full English version of the OS (Windows Vista) which will cost me extra 300 Euro. A mere upgrade (about 100 Euro) will not change the language.
Another options to get it from outside Germany, but that will take some time. So lets see if any breakthrough happens in the meantime. For now I am checking emails from cybercafes.
Today I am delighted to see that my blog has been unlocked. And it seems its not the only one affected. There are confusionsall around and conspiracy theories are being circulated.
We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam.
We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam.
Barack Obama was here in Berlin speaking to a massive audience in front of Siegessäule (victory column).
He talked about future foreign policy of America, arms control and unity with Europe in fights against terrorism. His speech was populist I should say touching all the recent problems in the world; he also mentioned Bangladesh once. Some excerpts:
Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?
Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?
Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don’t look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.
One CNN commenter commented that this has never happened for any other US president candidate. While Obama is rallying in foreign countries, McCain is busy holding meeting in small US town halls.
“Last week, Israel exchanged Samir Kuntar and four Hezbollah fighers for the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, two reserve soldiers who were abducted after being mortally wounded during a cross-border raid that sparked the Second Lebanon War on July 12, 2006.
Kuntar was convicted in 1979 of dragging 4 year-old Einat Haran and her father, Danny, from their Nahariya apartment to a nearby beach, where he murdered the little girl by smashing in her head with his rifle butt and killed her father by shooting him in the back and drowning him in the Mediterranean. Danny’s wife, Smadar Haran, hid with the couple’s 2 year-old daughter, Yael, in a crawlspace in their apartment. But she accidentally smothered Yael to death while trying to keep her from crying out by placing a hand over her mouth.“
