Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, We have taken delivery of our new rickshaw and the paint job is superb. There’s Linda standing alongside the rear of the new rickshaw. Kalam Kalam is the rickshaw walla who proudly pedals a little slice of Australia around the streets of Banani, Baridhara and Basundhara (three contiguous suburbs of Dhaka). For …Read More
Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, This may seem a strange vantage from which to argue for public education. Better to study the behaviour of the fox from within the fox’s den, I would contend. There is in fact no better position from which to see the pertinent issues crystallise right in front of one’s eyes. It …Read More
Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, Perhaps one of the biggest surprises about living in this part of the world has been to discover how vibrant the environmental movement is. I have to be honest: I would not have thought poverty-stricken people who are battling to fill hungry mouths would have any time or inclination to worry …Read More
Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, Travellers to South-East Asia will know that Asian people typically love their colourful bling. Bangadeshis are unashamed bling lovers, too. The taxi driver in Bangkok has flowers hanging from the rear-vision mirror. The bus driver in Sri Lanka has coloured lights and brightly adorned religious figurines on the dashboard. The truck …Read More
Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, Running a Melbourne Cup sweep in a foreign culture is hilarious. Apparently, this hasn’t been done routinely at our school, so I took on the gig. I tried to include all of the staff, as I have always done with such things, but this is not as simple as publicising the …Read More
Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, “You can live like a king,” was a common refrain in the international school community. It was never our motivation for coming here. From the outset, we’ve been interested in the differences in wealth and happy to act as minor agents for redistribution. We knew we would struggle to some extent …Read More
Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, Jamuna Future Park 6. Standing incongruously in neighbouring Bashundhara is Jamuna Future Park. This is a complex which includes a colossal shopping mall – less than half-filled at this stage – cheek by jowl with a ride park, replete with modern, new theme park-standard contraptions designed to terrify (you know the …Read More
That’s a photograph of a pile of recycled paper, with each piece being about 1 metre x 1 metre. You can see about a third of the piles in this shot. Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, short at the cash register 1. Linda and I were shopping one evening during this past week and finished in …Read More
Shuvo shokal from Dhaka, Remember your school excursions? It was great to catch a coach to a dairy farm outside Albion Park, or to play another school in soccer on Elizabeth Park, Bellambi, or even to see a play at the Seymour Centre. Pelican Sheep Station was as far as most of us went. …Read More
Namaste from Kathmandu, The Green Revolution has indubitably come to Nepal. It’s had the same consequences as everywhere else: elimination of hunger; but also the less desirable effects of hastening rural-urban drift and swelling the population of the urban centres manifold. It has turned the Nepalese into a nation of vendors very few of …Read More