I Am Asif

It really came out of the blue. Mu (my chhoto fupu) and uncle (Dr. Shamsul Alam, my chhoto fupa) were supposed to go to uncle's village home at Mirzapur, Tangail with their whole family on Saturday, to stay at the new house they built there. Friday night all of the sudden my Dulabhai came up with the idea of going with them for just one day. I jumped for the idea immediately and my sister was also eager. So we made a phone call to my aunt, and the next morning, within just a few hour's notice, we were on the way. My aunt managed Shapanku's microbus for us. We were off early in the morning at 8:00. We were scheduled to meet with two other cars of my uncle's party in front of the Smriti Sho udho. But when we got there, they weren't there yet. Hence we thought, why not pay a visit to the National Monument? So we did. I've been to Smriti Shoudho before, but that was way back and I don't quite remember. That early in the morning there were very few people in th...

Today was Eid ul Adha, and as expected it wasn't quite different from the Eids of the past years. We prayed the Eid Jamaat at the sector 13 playground which was pretty impressively prepared for a big congregation. Qurbani of our cow was all done pretty fast. I don't wanna get into the details because it's pretty much the same each year. Oh, I forgot to say Eid Mubarak . Cow Shopping: Well, my visit to the cow hut (Gorur hut) yesterday is definitely worth mentioning. As I went to the hut last year as well, this year I had no intention to go. Because honestly speaking, I don't quite like the place, to be more honest, I'm scared of that place. But my father was insisting so much, so I decided to go at the very last moment. We went to the hut of Azompur at sector 6. The place was just as I expected. It was crowded with cows, of all sizes. Huge mass of people moving through it, and every now and then a cow is being led in or out through the crowd. Some of the cows have ...

That's right, today my blog turns 1 ! Exactly 1 year ago I started writing this blog with the post 'Don't know why' . As I mentioned on that very first post, I'm just writing this blog for myself. In the past 12 months I've written 29 posts, which is not a lot, but not bad considering the fact that I'm only writing about events of my life, not anything else. It's also more than I thought I could write. Looking back at my posts of the last year I find that my life's been mostly monotonous. There were some exceptions though. Some of those exceptions were indeed pleasant, as my tour to Bagerhat . But there have been shocking events as well, events I never thought I would have to write about, like the departures of Mejo Fupa and Shelly Apu . And another fact about my blog is that haven't been able to write all my emotions down, I couldn't express everything that have been going inside me. Some events, some thoughts are such that I can't eve...

I was really on a rescue operation last night, literally. Here's what happened. My mom and dad went to Bashundhara City Grand Hall at Panthopath to attend a wedding ceremony of a distant relative. Around 10:15 pm I got a call from dad, telling me that their car was locked with the keys inside, thanks to the driver. So they were stuck as they couldn't just leave the car there and come home by some other means. So I was appointed the rescue mission. I was to find the spare keys, manage a car from one of my uncles and head for the target location to rescue them from this situation. Alhamdulillah I managed to do everything nice and smooth. Within an hour we were back on our way home. Thanks to Allah I was successful in this sudden rescue operation.

Today is 16 December. 36 years ago, on this very day, our struggle from freedom was finally over. After 9 months of grueling battle, and with the cost of over 3 million lives, our land was finally free from the Pakistanis. Our army was mostly formed by the common people; the farmers, laborers, students, the general people of Bangladesh. I'm not a columnist, so I'm not going to write the history of the war. What I want to say here on this day, is my wish on the day of victory. It's not only my dream, it's the dream of every true Bangladeshi, it has been our dream since we earned independence. My dream, our dream is to bring the war criminals of '71 to justice. These are the people who helped the Pakistanis to kidnap, murder, rape thousands of Bangladeshis during our struggle for freedom. They helped our enemies to identify the freedom fighters so that they can kill them, to assassinate the intellectuals so that Bangladesh can never stand on their own feet, and to rap...

Nimmy Aunt is staying with us for the last couple of days, she's visiting Bangladesh after more than a decade. Their family got very close to ours when my parents went to London for higher education. My bro and sis have some great memories with Nimmy Aunt (I don't, cuz I wasn't even born back then. Damn!), that's why they are really happy to spend some time with her, chatting about those days in London. I wish I was there with them too. May be someday we'll visit London again (and this time I'll be there with them) and be her guests instead.

The internet connections were bugging me. I've tried 'em all since I came to Uttara. First we tried 'broadband'. It's between the inverted commas because it's actually slower than dial-up (believe it or not). The reason for that is, most of the broadband providers in this country split up a single 256/512 kbps broadband line among 60-100 subscribers! So the share of the bandwidth that you get is miserable. So, bye bye 'broadband'. Then I tried dial-up. There are some very attractive packages on the market currently, and I've used them a lot during the last 1.5 years. They give you 100-110 hours for a month just for 300 bucks. Sounds great, until you check out the speed, which is slower than a snail I guess. Moreover, the Fiber Optic cable connection of the country gets snapped every now and then (I don't know why that happens). So working on the net meant hitting the reload button over and over again until finally the page you want arrives (not w...

The merit list for the semester final of 2nd year 1st semester was out today, and Alhamdulillah I stood 11th! It was a bit unexpected, but thanks to Allah, my name's on the list. I strongly believe that this is a direct gift from Allah, as I'm sure I don't study even as much as 1/3 rd of anyone else on that list. I was on the merit list of the very 1st semester as well, I stood 5th then and got 18000 bucks. Then 1-2 was not so good, and I was way out of the reach of scholarship. For the whole 2-1 semester I never thought that I have any chance of coming up with a good enough result. Even after I gave the final exams, I wasn't hopeful. But the results showed that most of the students ended up getting low scores. My score in Mechanics is what I think was the deciding factor, and also CSE, on which I got A and A+ respectively. Anyway, It's great to be back on the merit list. Moreover, Inshallah I'll get 9000 taka as scholarship! My family is ecstatic, especially my...