Power Blog

OK so I'm going to the Australian club in a bit for some great fun and food so I will make this quick. I'm finally back in the Desh! This is day 2 of this new adventure and it's already been interesting. First off my bags didn't come right away. It wasn't too big a deal since I had some cloths here but my hair looked fuzzy for 2 days because I was without the necessary hair product to make it look right. I received a call (after calling these people endlessly for 24 hours with no one answering:) from a guy saying go to the airport to room 15 in order to receive my bags. So I go to the airport (epic traffic journey) and go to the parking garage. I pay 75 cents to the guy to let the driver park there before I set off into the airport. I get waved down by a guy in a shack on the way in who asks to see my papers. I show him my passport and baggage check slip and he waves me on. Then I go to the entrance. The guard ignored me as I walked to the door but I asked him where room 15 was. He gestured towards the back of the airport and so after grabbing a cart for my 2, 50 pound trunks I was off. After navigating a few hallways and finding the ever rare sign I found room 15. Room 15 consists of a woman at a desk with assorted colours of paper, 3 large cabinets with locks, 2 filing cabinets, all of which look about 50 years old. I handed her my papers and she immediately filled in a blue form and thrust it into my hands. "Go right then straight then left," she said using hand gestures. I clarified the directions but they still made no sense so I retraced my steps back down the hallway looking for a place to go left. I finally saw a man at a door and gave him the blue slip the woman had given me. He asked for my passport and carefully compared the two. Then I entered the familiar room full of the luggage carousels and piles of unclaimed luggage. I spotted mine in a pile of luggage that had grown about 3fold since my previous visit a day before. After gazing around at a huge amount of people at the lost luggage counter I collected my first trunk. It was then a woman stopped me and asked for either my luggage receipt or the lost luggage claim, both of which were taken either when I filed the claim or went to room 15. Luckily I made a photocopy and quickly produced it. After she checked to make sure both boxes were mine I was on my way. I navigated back out the way I came in. I tried to bypass the xray machine as I did the previous day but was without luck and had to wait for the screeners to pretend to look through my baggage. After finding my driver I finally had my luggage! And that's all I have time for! Time to eat food!

Power outrage!!! (The extra r makes all the difference :)

It's a really common thing here. By common I mean everyday. By midday it heats up to a balmy 93 degrees Fahrenheit and every A.C. in Dhaka is switched on. This is when the load shedding begins. Load shedding or a rolling black-out is an intentional shutdown of certain grids of power in order maintain power in other areas. Normally this occurs 3-6 times or so a day depending on the temperature and the mood the fiend that controls the lot is in. This morning some storms somehow managed to knock out power for an apparent 2-3 days. I'm not sure how this worked because I didn't see any damage but the man shouting into a microphone in a patrolling rickshaw through the streets of my neighborhood assured us that this indeed was the occurrence. Of course we were informed of this 14 hours into a non-stop outage. The power came on for short 15-30 minute intervals for a bit but not long enough to save the food spoiling in many people's refrigerators. Our generators can run 3 lights and 3 fans per apartment unless there are special circumstances in a couple apartments in which a plug can operate.

My problem solving mode kicked in. I wanted to save the remaining food in freezers before it was too late. My thinking was if we waited until morning most of the food will be Shesh which of course is bangla for finished (and in in rare cases dead:) I spent 2 hours making calls and sending texts going through different scenarios but not much can be done until morning. It was suggested we connect a refrigerator to a working wall plug. In an amazing set of adapters and multi-plugs we achieved the feat of connecting one fridge to the working socket some 30ish ft away. Hopefully all will go well and we won't burn down the lane 5 apartments. (I live on lane 8:) With the fridge successfully connected I made my way home to an oddly silent half of DOHS (my neighborhood). We have power! I don't know for how long but in the meantime my AC is on full blast in hopes I will be able to sleep if it goes to on an hour off an hour generator power. It will overheat if it runs more than an hour. It gets hot real quick without a working fan. Oddly quiet too. I hope it stays on tonight but we shall see!

I'm stealing this from Allie who stole it from Cath who stole it from Dave who stole it from Fred who stole it from the Economist :D

On Tuesday the Economist announced that Dhaka is the second worst city in the world to live in, behind Harare. All the things they said were wrong with this city: power cuts, gas supply problems, a lack of green spaces, a malfunctioning public transport system, extreme vandalism, dirty roads, noxious sewers, polluted rivers, high unemployment and suffocating overpopulation.

Want to come visit me?


There are a lot of things to be frustrated about in Dhaka. As much as I love my job and the people I work with Dhaka certainly has its challenges. One of my largest pet peeves is motorcycles driving on the sidewalk. I hate having to move out of the way or almost getting flattened. Today after stubbing my toe on the uneven sidewalk I lashed out at a motorcycle coming my way by slapping the top of his helmet with a satisfying whack! I'm sure he was very confused about why a foreigner taking this course of action when everyone drives on the sidewalk. I had a similar instance about a week ago when I yelled at a police officer on the back of a motorcycle going down the sidewalk. I often evilly plan different scenarios of retaliation and later attempt repentance. I haven't been successful but the Lord works in mysterious ways. :D Seriously though even though my bangla is terrible I want to be able to say "Is your head ok? Drive on the Road!" I've only had time to execute my "road go!" statement.

I haven't blogged in awhile. Partly due to being busy and partly due to not wanting to go on a tangent for 9 years. However, I have truly been blessed over the past few months. Jenny is FINALLY here and that makes me very happy! I hope she can find a job here soon! Today we went to lunch. She ordered a grilled cheese and me a chicken sandwich. Both having similar ingredients in bangladesh she took mine by mistake. After eating 30% of my sandwich I took a bite into the grilled cheese. Realizing it was missing chicken we switched. There's a new coffee roasting place in Dhaka giving out free drinks during the testing week. We decided to come here after school. Jenny ordered a mint mocha and I ordered a raspberry white mocha. After drinking half of my drink she realized it had a raspberry taste to it. Me being oblivious and still angry at my motorcycle encounter I failed to notice why my raspberry white mocha had a chocolate layer on the bottom. Twice in one day! We're awesome! It's great to have someone to cause trouble with! This coffee place is great and I think I'm going to move in. They're going to sell coffee at competitive american prices. Amar Bhalolage! I like it! I think Jenny is going to live in this coffee place a lot over the next few weeks! I LOVE COFFEE!!!!!!!!!! This place has a great atmosphere to get things done(like job applications for Jenny she says). Next week is spring break and I'm going to have am much needed trip out of Dhaka. We're going to the Bandarbans. We even have a train this time so we don't have to deal with the bus. I am very happy! It's a place where there are hills and green places and quietness. I need quiet. If you took an average db level in Dhaka it'd be like 85db at least for sure. Perhaps I will blog more soon!

So I this think I had my first satisfying, successful, string of sentences with a rickshaw driver today...Ok in retrospect it was like one sentence. But still it feels great to be understood in a very assertive manner! It's translated to something like this...

Rickshaw Wallah: You! Foreigner I will go for 50 taka
Me: Why? I will not pay 50 because I am a foreigner I pay 20
Rickshaw Wallah: You're a foreigner! I will not go for 20!
Me: Ok... Go (gesturing him to move along)

I consider 20 a fair base price anyway and sometimes will give more, explaining my base price as best I can to the driver and why they are getting slightly more, usually for the speed/safety of the driver and occasionally friendliness. Although usually if they are talkative they want more money.

I have other useful bangla phrases in my vocabulary for such situations that I neglected to use. Like close your mouth (not so nice to say so I probably won't use it) or you're crazy (context is when asking for a high price) or my favorite, Is your head ok?! :D Honestly I know very very little bangla but it's fun to speak. I took a CNG (auto rickshaw... Think like a three wheeled motorcycle with seats on the back I may have a picture...) to a market.




So I stole this one off google...It's Huge( the picture not the CNG which is like a barred tin can)! Anyway so I went to this market which is about 45 minutes away (Sometimes it's about 3 years away seriously you never know in Dhaka traffic). I wanted to buy a coffee maker. I ended up buying a blender too so I can make coffee milkshakes! As I was walking around the market people would keep asking my simple things in English and I kept answering (very simply) in Bangla. They were like oooo you speak Bangla and I said yes and moved quickly on before they asked a more complicated question :D It was a lot of fun. On the way back a beggar, who was a young boy, asked my CNG driver what a bill he had was. It was 10 rupees. I preceded to barter with him for it for the entirety of the light. It was fun. I bought it for like 25 tk. It's worth about 15 :D. I just figured he'd never be able to trade it in so he might as well get something for it. He had a huge smile when we left. Overall it was a fun random adventure. I really should do a real update but today was the first day back at school and I have some prep for tomorrow yet. Overall it was a great break!