Impossed holiday

There is a trend of imposing the educational institutions to remain closed to celebrate victories. Whenever Bangladesh won any cricket or football match students demand their classes to be suspended as if it is their right. Even students want to keep the istitution closed or to halt the exams to watch matches of world cup. We must celebrate any victory of our country. But we shouldn't utilize it to get some extra benifit.

Today some students impossed a holiday on our varsity. They locked the dormetory gates so that general students can't attend classes. They also successfully got away the teachers from class. So we are missing a day for nothing. Thats how session jot starts.

A long desired Victory

At last Bangladesh cricket team at last won a match after long time (scoreboard). Yesterday they beat India for the first time on their 100th One Day International match. This is being the first ever victory at home ground will be a historic one.

After the victory hundreds of students of our varsity came out of the dormetories dancing. We covered our whole campus with the victory procession not caring the very cold and chilling weather. Then the excited students went out and started dancing in the highway blocking the trafic for some time. Actually our joy knew no bound then. It was a amazing feeling.

Mathematical Olympiad

Winner of the competition along with the guests

A mathematics competition named "Mathematical Olympiad" was organized at Rajshahi by Prothom Alo (a leading newspaper of Bangladesh) on last Friday. I was there as an invigilator of the competition and a volunteer of the festival along with some other students of RUET. This was a thrilling experience for me.

There was two part of the occasion. In the first part interested students of different schools and colleges took part in a mathematical competition. The problems there was creative and out of the traditional text book.

Second part of the occasion was a seminar. There famous writer and professor Dr. Mohammed Zafar Iqbal and professor Dr. Kaikobad answered questions of those advanced learners. There school going boys and girls asked questins that even didn't come to my mind.

Dr. Zafar Iqbal is signing the bundles of autograph books


Dr. Kaikobad with my friends

Being Secularist or Religious

Wamy has written a very nice article about "Why secularism is unreal?". He illustrated the ideas of so called secularism and pointed out weaknesses of the idea. Here are some magnetic parts of that article-

"If you are to promote secularism, you have to eradicate religion not only from state affaires but also from the society itself. There is no other way to achieve it. And there is no way it is going to happen. This is the saddest part.

As for the Muslims, we have the message and we hold the truth. We don't need anything else. We ought to stand firm against anything that is counter to truth. We will fail ourselves both in this world and in the hereafter if we seek solutions of our problems in man-made ideals."

On the comment section of this article there are many comments with different thoughts. On reply to this quoted lines Rezwan wrote this-

"Its ok at micro level. Because the faith that drives a true muslim should be like that. But don't try to impose these on people of other religion or try to change the differences and complexions of the world because you think you are the best. That is called a superiority complex. God has created these differences for a purpose and we should not think anything illogical to counter it."

I am not willing to involed with this critical logical war. I am just enjoying the debate.

Related articles-

1. Logical Interpretations Required by Rezwan
2. Secularism and Bangladesh by Niraz

Positive facts of Private Universities

Private universities of Bangladesh are making headlines now and than for their laggings. Newspapers and folks are busy flushing on their shortages. Yes, the have drawbacks. But along with some good quality. Here is a fair try to point out some of those positive facts.

1. Private universities offer an environment that helps the students to be smart. Smartness is the first fact, where students of private universities are well ahead of those of public universities.
2. There is no session jot, no politics in those universities. Which make the campus (very tiny though) violence free.
3. Private universities offer the courses completely in English and the lectures are mostly in English, which is very important to improve the English proficiency.
4. There are better opportunities to select courses. Where students of public universities just go through some pre selected courses.
5. Private universities keep their syllabus updated always. They don't want to be back dated.
6. Public universities have all kind of teachers, good, bad, intellectuals and foolish. Whether private universities select only fine quality part time teachers from those. They also have option to change teachers opting for better options.

As I am not a student of private university, I am not the perfect one to figure out the positive facts. There are other positive facts too. May be you can figure out some.

SIM everywhere

Recently price of SIM card in Bangladesh decreased radically. Two years ago I bought my GrameenPhone (GP) SIM for 4000 tk and yesterday I bought an AKtel SIM for 130 tk. I bought it to get extra facilities of AKtel that is not available in GP. Anyone with little effort can buy a SIM now. Though he/she have to manage a cell to use the SIM. One may think that cost of using mobile is very reasonable here. But the actual situation is never like it. Subscribers only reducing the price of SIM, while the call cost is all the same.

Tale of a Brave but Failed nation

Pakistani general signing the surrender paper on 16 December 1971

Today is 16th December, one of the most important days of history of Bangladesh. On this day we won the 9 month long war and liberated ourselves from Pakistan. We then proved that we are a brave nation in the world. After 33 years now we are proving everyday that we are nothing but a failed nation. Here is the tale of a brave nation and a failed nation for you.

A Brave Nation
All Bangladeshi should be proud to be a native of such a nation, a nation of thousands of martyrs who sacrificed their life for their country. They had nothing to depend on, no arms, no training to fight with the trained and well equipped Pakistani army. They only had their life in hand to sacrifice for the better nation for next generation. We must not forget their sacrifice for us, who introduced our nation as a brave nation.

A Failed Nation
We are now observing 33th victory day. Much much could have achieved during these years. But what we see? The situation is not improved as it should have. We are still poor, corrupted mostly and scared of terrorism. There is very little achievement to mention and to be proud of.
We made our country independent to get a better nation. But it is never happened. We failed to lift up ourselves in most of the sectors like economy, industry and politics. Though sad to say, the big industries of Bangladesh are mostly built during Pakistani rulings. We not only failed to build new industries but also failed to keep those running. The whole rail system of Bangladesh is founded by British rulers who deprived us. But our countrymen did nothing to extend the rail network. Those are only few example of failure. Political situation of Bangladesh is going worse every day. And the public security is a matter of mare cry now.

People of Bangladesh still to enjoy the golden fruit of independence

One should not conclude from my writing that Pakistani ruling was better!! It is never like that. The real fact is, we got ourselves independent for a better country. But we failed so badly in most sectors. Braves who fought for us found their dreams just withering away. We are a failed nation now.

A poem on Victory Day

A day to remember the martyrs
a day to mourn and shade tears.
This day introduce us as brave,
beckon to come out of the cave.
A day to sweep away the tears,
to be happy forgetting all fears.
We promise being unite we stay,
lets enjoy our victory day.

Note: I wrote this poem to send to my friends as SMS. I used to create this kind of peoms now and then.

History learning: English medium style

Do you have any idea about what kind of book and syllabus English medium schools of Bangladesh use? Though it's hard to believe there is hardly any history book which tells about Bangladesh. Most of the books are Indian with some British books. No wonder those books contain detail about India and Britain. To be fair some schools select books which tells about the whole world. But there you will find hardly a sentence about Bangladesh. They don't know about British oppression, Language movement and Liberation war. I can't understand what is the value of knowing wild people of Africa ignoring the brave warriors who liberated us?

The excuse those schools like to show is that, there is no good history books written in English which illustrates Bangladesh and can be used as text. Some schools of capital like "Scholastica" are vast than many private universities. They have enough resource and quality teachers. Can't they take a initiative themselves to publish a appropriate history book? Aren't there any intellectuals who can write such a book?