Bangladesh at a Glance

I thought it would be a good idea to share our country information for all of them who belongs to other nation. Please go through the video clip and of course ask question if you need to know more about it. I can share you more video and textual content if you have interest.



For tourism related information please visit:
http://bangladesh.saarctourism.org/

or keep eyes open for:

Culture of Bangladesh

The Bengal region has a multifaceted folk heritage, enriched by its ancient animist, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim roots. Weaving, pottery and terracotta sculpture are some of the earliest forms of artistic expression. The best known literature of Bangladesh is the work of the great Bengali poets Rabindranath Tagore and Nasrul Islam. Folk theatre is common at the village level and usually takes place during harvest time or at melas (village fairs). There are many folk dances, but classical dance is largely borrowed from Indian models and is frowned upon by the more severe religious leaders.




Bangladesh's Muslims and Hindus live in relative harmony. The Muslim majority has religious leaders, pirs, whose status straddles the gap between that of a bishop and that of a sage. Hinduism in Bangladesh lacks the pomp and awe of the Indian version, but consequently Hindu ceremonies are rarely conducted in the depths of temples to which access is restricted. People here are very willing for you to watch and even participate. Buddhists today form only a tiny minority of the population. It's worth noting that the Bangladeshi pride in ancestry is balanced by the Islamic slant of the country's intellectual life which tends to deny the achievements of the preceding Hindu and Buddhist cultures.

Muslim festivals follow a lunar calendar. At the beginning of the year, Ramadan is a month-long period of fasting in February/March. At the full moon 14 days before the start of Ramadan, Shab-e-Barat is a sacred night when alms and sweets are distributed to the poor. Hindu festivals follow a different calendar but they generally fall at much the same date each year. The Holi Festival or Festival of Colours, commonly known as the spring festival, is celebrated in the first week of March. Durga Puja is celebrated during October, and statues of the goddess astride a lion, with her ten hands holding ten different weapons, are placed in every Hindu temple.

A typical Bangladeshi meal consists of beef (or sometimes mutton, chicken, fish or egg) and vegetables cooked in a hot spicy sauce, yellow watery lentils (dal) and plain rice. Fish is part of the staple diet; however, over-fishing has led to a scarcity of river fish and more sea fish are appearing on menus. Alcoholic drinks are not widely available; head for five-star hotels and ritzier restaurants when you want a tipple.

New Experiences and Challenges in Norway

Its nice to put few words about Norway. Today May 21st 2009. Its the 9th day for me at Norway. It is very difficult to know much in nine days about a country. I am sharing a few words of my experience at Norway.

Let me start with food. It is difficult for me to get food I like from office or any restaurant. Mostly I am having fish which is largely available every where. The way of preparing food is litle bit different than our region(Bangladesh or Indian sub continent). We like to have hot spices. Here Noweigian's put very litle spice, some times they put cheese. But it is tasty. Rice is available every where. We get Corn Flakes, lots of fresh fruits, Chicken is also available but I don't have it as it is not Halal, but according to my colleagues its good. Egg and bread also available for breakfast.

As I have stayed only two days at my apartment , I have less experience with preparing food at home. But during the two days at Apartment I have very good cooking experiences. We get most of the Masala(Spice) which is mainly imported from India or pakistan. Halal chicken , beef and fresh fish also available but it is very expensive. So I can prepare any food we like. That means at Oslo , if anyone knows how to cook food, then food is not at all a problem. We use electrical heater to cook.


The Norwegians are really good and helpful. They are bit reserved but they helps people who seeks. They lead good life. Most of them marry and take care of their childs. Some of them do not believe in God but there are peoples who have good religious knowledge. They do not disturb people who wants to follow their religion. They enjoy almost whole night of Friday and Saturday. Office timing is mostly 9 to 4.

Transportation is good here. Buses are very deciplined in terms of time is concern. Tickets can be purchased with automatic machine from Bus stop and also inside bus.

Thanks for being with me.
Keep your eyes open to know more......

Three weeks with FK at Hadeland

It was 18th May 2009. Started my journey with FK. Left apartment around 8:00AM and reached the bus station at 8:45. Jobaer dropped us till bus stop. It is to be mentioned that Jobaer is the person who is helping me a lot to adopt myself to the new place. We had to wait in the bus till 9:05. We had a break at Airport to collect more participants. We reached Hadeland around 11:20. Hadeland is a good hotel to live for the 3 weeks. We have got double room. Me and Nahian got room no 113 which locates at the front side of the hotel. We took lunch at 12:30 and it is the usual time to lunch here. I took Rice,Fish, Vegetable,Dessert and some more items. It was not bad to have lunch with. Taste of fish was good. There were 3-4 types of dessert along with some fruit item.

We had an Introduction session of Fk preparatory course. Finished the introduction at 5. At 6 we went for dinner. It was really good to have dinner with almost 60 participants from around 10 countries. I was put into social group and had a very interactive meeting where we have made the plan of event management for next 3 weeks.

Everyday the training session starts at 8:45 and go till 5:00PM. At 7 there are some more event occurs which is optional to attend with and it last around 1 hour. After these sessions we play Vollyball,Footbal and Some indoor games like Table tennis, Pool etc.

I am enjoying the lectures. Its great to share experiences with 60 participants of 10 countries and highly qualified lecturers.


Its a course conducted by Fredskorpset(Not exactly but means like Peace corporation) and Its main aim to improve our knowledge about coping critical situation at a new place with new people.

Thanks for your patience. I am happy to share the complete experience of the stay. Let me update the experience daily basis.

1st day 18th may 2009

Left home at 8:20 am from 5 Hansteens gate, Oslo, Norway with Jobaer. Jobaer dropped us till bus stop and went back to office. I was also acompanied by Nahian, another colleague who came to Norway with me. Later-on Per Einer another Norweigian colleague of Escenic(The company I work for) joined us. Nahian and Per Einer sat together in Bus. I was alone in a double sit till Oslo airport. The activity of one friend attracted me and lateron she became one of my best friend of the group. I will write about her later-on in this article.The bus stopped at Airport for half an hour. This half an hour was great as I got opportunity to meet new friends. I meet Hosea , peter, cris , cao and some more friends. Few friends joined us at Airport.

Jeanette, sat beside me and she was the first Norweigian friend I meet in the course. She was very much friendly , I had a great tour with her until we reach hotel Hadeland around 11:40 AM.

The first impression of the hotel was excellent. The hotel is located in an excellent natural environment. The whole hotel is made by wood. Two of us had to share the hotel room. Me and Nahian was allocated room#213. At 12:30 we went for lunch. Its a really new experience there. Lots of items but very few was lucrative to me. I like most of the fish items.

The most interesting exercise for the day was to draw friends picture. We were splitted into two group. And both the group was sitting in circular way in front of participants of other group. And we have drawn the friends picture who is sitting in front of us. We had to move to next person after a certain interval of time. At the end we came up with good photos of each other and it was excellent to introduce with each other.

My photo was the most perfect among all others.







After finishing the classes,dinner and discussion among social group we have spent around 2 hours at party hall with new friends, played pool, table soccer etc.

We ended a great day with lots of new expectations and challenges. My most challenging thing was food.

Day 2, 19th May 2009

The topics for the day was Being a change agent- Personal & institutional change within FK framework.

The session was excellent. We started with a power point presentation and an excellent exercise of drawing the life line and important event of life. It was really very good to frame the whole life and expectations. We had to share the life line with other friends which helps us to know different perspective of life.

We had some different exercise to express ourself about changing our attitude to adjust to the challenges. We ended up the session with great pleasure.

The food experiences of the day was good but I was missing meat(chicken). I have reported the problem to authority of the hotel and they have promised to do better next day.

Then after dinner we had excellent knowledge sharing with Sabeth(ex participant from Sudan). His presentation was excellent with interactive slide show of set of Photos. The way he expressed himself was really different and I liked the presentation so much. I have talked to him after the session personally and came to know lots of experiences about FK, his career outside his country, challenges and how he adjusted himself with different place and culture. When he came to Norway , he brought a big Jacket(Shown in his picture) but now he can survive with a thin cotton shirt.

After session with Sabeth we went to play volleyball and soccer. It was raining slightly and i was feeling very cold . The rain was really very light but the temperature was low as it was windy. i came back to play indoor games and I meet Logan , played couple of games with him and increased the intimacy with him.



Slept around 2:30 am after updating my blogg and my regular Isha prayer.



Day 3, 20th May 2009

The topic for the day was Development issues and Challenges. It was more or less theoretical class which was instructor led and power-point presentation based. We had mix opinion about his session. We had come across several issues like poverty and development. According to me it was an excellent session and he has touched a lot of important concepts but he was shortage of time as he had to cover lot of topic in a single day. We read some articles which was given last day to read. Honestly speaking i did not read it last night and we had to depend on Lene for the exercise. we have read an article written by Amartya sen. I had spend some very good time with Dan Banik the lecturer in my language and I was really excited to speak with him in my own language. He invited me to his house and mee too. Hopefully we can meet again in Oslo some time this year.

After the class I had a great day in terms of dinner. Hotel authority arranged halal food for me separately. It was really exciting for me. I enjoyed the food on that day.

After dinner I went for cycling and had spend some very good time with Friedell and some of her latin friends. We have shared some cultural differences between Bangladesh and their country. We become very good friends from the day. This is the starting of a very good friendship. she was the friend I was mentioning about in bus while coming from Oslo to Hadeland. she is different in terms of interaction with others.

Day 4, 21st May 2009

The topics for the day was Personal Challenges -Psychological approach

I did not enjoy the class much because we had lots of simillar type of exercise and where I had less to contribute but at the end of the day i have learnt a lot.
The excercises was like different feeling with different approaches. Like how do we approach to be in a network. So after all these exercises one thing was clear to us that there are no better approach then being polite and friendly while approaching other to become part of their group or family.

End of the day i have learnt some good tips to improve blogg. It was great presentation from Birgitte. i have enjoyed the tips and added good flavour to my blogg. i hope i will get some more feedback from her about this blogg.

Day 5, 22nd may 2009
The topic of the day was Media tool: Digital Story telling

This was an excellent session conducted by Birgitte Wergeland. She had taught different approches to make short story. She introduce some digital tools like audacity and movie maker. But the more important part was collecting picture, theme, story and combining them. I enjoyed the session a lot. I have created a short story which is attached here. At the end of the session we watched all the story and had great fun.




We have enjoyed almost whole night at party hall. I have learnt some latin dances and taught some traditional dances to other friends. Played table soccer, pool etc. Most of the games enjoyed as we lost most of them.

It is to be noticed that Diego, Friedell and Sonja was really good in dancing. Victo,Abede,Peter,Sara also contributed a great deal of dancing with other. Jeanette and one of the latin friend spent most of the time within themselves.

First Weekend with FK

We went to Oslo for a package tour as official weekends with FK. Some of the picture below will describe the excitement of the tour. We have visited technical Museam, Art Museam, Folk Museam and couple of parks along with river view and walk on the river. Nahuell was really great in his guide for the entire tour.

Day 8(6th) 25th May 2009
Partners day.

The best day for me at Hadeland. I have got an opportunity to know more detail about the contract and facilities provided by FK.

We have got Tom Handegård, the CTO of Escenic AS. I had a feeling that some one came to visit us from our family to Hadeland. I have spent a excellent time with him.

The day started with a power point presentation of FK facilities and responsibility of participant(me) and partners(Escenic).

We had to do some good exercises with partner representatives.


We have come to some good conclusion after the discussion. Some of them are:
1. We will have evaluation in every 3 months
2. The partner(Escenic) will arrange Air Ticket in December as a vacation to go to my native.
3. Escenic will arrange a technical course at oslo
4. We will have medical insurance through out the exchange program.
5. Escenic will help us to claim family allowance(Home visit allowance) of Kr. 10000/= as I am responsible for a big family.
6. We will get some halal food at office for lunch. Escenic will discuss the procedure for the same.

The benifits which is allotted for participants(me) are as follows:
1. Monthly allowance from Home and Oslo
2. Housing
3. Departure Grant(It will be allocated regardless of the actual expenses incurred.)
4. Setup grant(It will be allocated regardless of the actual
expenses incurred.)
5. language Course
6. Proficiency course
7. Travel cost
8. Follow up activity grant(at home country after finishing the course)
9. Home visit allowance(Need to apply separately)
10. Medical insurance
11.Participant Initiated activity grants

If all these are implemented perfectly, I strongly believe that we will have great time at Oslo and we can make the exchange program successfull and show a great mile stone for next participants.

I suggest FK to keep option to extend the agreement if participants want.

9th(7th) & 10th(8th) Day 26-27 may 2009
The topic of the days was Personal Challenges: Cultural approach

This was the most exciting session of the entire course. He has proved that training is nothing but entertainment and fun. We have learnt a lot of lesson with fun and entertainment. He has taught plenty of concept without even using the presentation. Mostly he insisted us to do exercise and made us interactive to bring out the talens from us and taught us with our own experiences. It is really difficult to explain the entire sessions in this short explanation. I will write a separate article for his session if i get some time. Now I am showing some of the photos to have brief about the course:

Photos yet to publish...

11th(9th) & 12th(10th) Day 28-29 may 2009

The most important and fruitfull topics of the course. The course was about Development and Peace building conducted by Sarah Henkeman.

Her two days session was excellent and relevant to the course. She had presented her knowledge and experiences and brought our talents by giving different exercises. Through exercises and her lecture we have gained a great deal of knowledge about development and peace building.


The most interesting exercise was conflict resulotion. And i have enjoyed the exercise with two instance and acted as Victim and Mediator. I was praised for my performance as a Mediator to resolve the conflict of a Family(Typical husband wife conflict). We also had some exercise related to defining fundamental needs, poverty and develpment. We have ended the two day session with handfull of knowledge about peace building and development.

13th and 14th day-Weekend at Hadeland

There was nothing special about this weekend. We were busy for some common activity like playing, dancing, singin, gosseping, swiming. I will not write much about this now.


15th(11th) and 16th(12th) Day 1st and 2nd June 2009
We had to prepare and present a session with Norweigian school. We have prepared whole monday for school visit project. It was an excellent experience. I had to face lots of difficulty to make all the participant available for preparation and the final day of presentation. We have prepared very good presentation and the final school visit project was a grand success. We had a easy going project. We have chosen Social Development covering Bullying in School. The session was really good and we were praised for the performance by both the course leader(Henrik and Peter). After coming back from school we have participated in group evaluation of the school visit project.

16th(13th) day 3rd june 2009
The topic for the day was Physical health and security. This was the worst session of the entire course. We could not get much information about the content. The session was not at all interctive and relevant to the content. It was not an easy going session for us. I have noticed that atleast 20% participant was attentive(were in sleepy mode). Hope we can get some more information from the power-point presentation and get help from FK if it is required. Input from any participant is highly appreciated.

17th(14th) day , 4th June 2009
A great presentation about FK and media. We have learnt a lot about presenting ourself in media. We have learnt how to take good photos in the previous evening from Liz Palm. She was excellent in her presentation. I recommend the session from her to conduct in the first week so that the participants can experience their lesson during the great course.

Last day 5th June 2009
We have reached to the final day of the course on friday 5th june. we have left the hotel at 10:00 am towards Oslo to attent the Participants conference and completed a great preparatory course. I hope this will add a great value to my life. I will try to utilize the knowledge of FK course and contribute to make better world along with FK.



Thanks to all for reading this long article.

Please put your valuable comments to improve the articles.

Afzalur Rashid
afzal_01@yahoo.com

Trip to Oslo

Its nice to share the experiences of the first tour to Europe. It was 12th May 2009, Scheduled to fly to Norway. The flight was at 8:30 pm. I was prepared a day before and it was really difficult for me to leave my parents. I thought of spending whole day of 12 th may with my parents but unfortunately I had to go to Sweden Embassy to Collect a paper which was missing due to the mistake of Embassy people and lack of information from our Dhaka office. At-last I could collect the most important document for entering to Schengen area along with Visa but I had to sacrifice 3 hours which I was suppose to spend with my parents. My brothers, cousines,brother in law, student and some other well wisher's came for the see off to Dhaka Airport. we reached Zia International Airport,Dhaka at 4:30pm. Waited for an hour to me some other relatives who were on the way to airport for my see off. Entered inside at around 5:30 pm. Got the boarding pass so easily. Entered into the Immigration area. The real pain started there. Immigration peaople started harazing us in different ways. We had to move and convince 9 immigration peoples to get clearance from Dhaka Airport. The filght was on time. I reached Doha Airport at 11:15 , local time. Took rest around one and half an our and again started our flight at 1:05am local time. Journey was long but it was comfortable in all the means. We reached Frankfurt on time at 6:00 in the morning. We had to wait there around 4 hours 30 minutes to get into next flight with Lufthan. We had to spend some time with Imiigration Police but they have treated us very well. We had to show the document which we have collected at the day of leaving dhaka from Sweden office. The flight was delayed by 30 mins. Reached norway around 13:25. Took around 1 hour to come out of Airport along with luggage. One of My colleague of Escenic AS received us from airport. The temparature was not disappointing. It was 10 degree celsius which is better than our expectation. We have got into train from Airport station. This was my first train experience at Oslo. We reached National Theatret , near our apartment(5A Hansteens Gate, Oslo, Norway). Had to walk for 10 minutes to reach home. Cooked food using the materials already bourght by Jobaer my colleague. Visited office around 4:30 to introduce with Colleague on 13th May. Next day went to collect work permit and Visa of 15 months. There was a long que. I was 117 in the line and it took 3 hours to get the Visa along with work permit. Then we went to register for Social ID and came back to office at around 4:00 pm. Next day 15th May we attended regular office at Oslo. On 16th May we went to Play cricket to Krinjso, meet with some Bangladeshi's and enjoyed cricket. On 17th we have observed the biggest event of Norway, Constitutional day. And finally we are at Hadeland for FR(Fredskopset) course from 18th May and Hopefully we can enjoy time with FK till 5th June.

Thats it from me for the tour to Oslo.