Jeni as a Bangladeshi

Thanks for all those who emailed me about the cyclone in Bangladesh, and appologies for not returning your emails sooner. Luckily, I have been traveling in Thailand for the past week and am currently safely still in Thailand. I have not been able to reach my colleagues in Dhaka, which I’m assuming is due to electricity outages, etc. I am originally flying back to Dhaka in the morning, but given the situation, I may hold out for a few more days here until I’m more comfortable with the conditions back in Bangladesh before I hop onto a flight. Will provide another update once I’m back.

P.S. - On a more positive note, I got my official scuba diving certification! 

You know,

As I help to create curriculum and coordinate training programs for the students here in Bangladesh, I am often reminded of my teaching experience at Hope Chinese School. Of dragging myself out of bed on Sundays mornings to my 9AM classes, pulling late nights on Saturdays (okay, sometimes due to procrastination) correcting homework and quizzes, and eating in the car while rushing from one campus to the other (and *ALWAYS* being late for my afternoon classes).

And as I think back on all of it now, it strikes me how much of my out-of-class college experience was from the time spent with my students (…and their homework). It’s also interesting how my perceptions about teaching evolved through those years. What began as a chore gradually turned into a personal, emotional responsibility - the highlight of my weekend was knowing that my students enjoyed class that day, and I took offense when I heard anything negative said about them (the adult Chinese community loves to gossip - it’s inevitable).

During those years, teaching for me had never been about drilling my students on mathematical formula or improving their test scores. They were already over-achieving and smart and under academic pressure from growing up in Chinese-American households. I didn’t see it my job to traumatize them more (well, academically). I wanted to make sure that the students also saw the other side of a classroom - that teamwork is important even in math, that it’s okay to challenge their teachers, that their hour with me is not to memorize the pythagorean theorem, but to learn how to think.

It’s been years since those days where my mornings began with quieting down hyperactive boys and reassuring female students that there’s no such thing as cooties. But thanks to technology (a.k.a. Facebook), I am updated as some of them graduate from school, travel around the country/world, or repeatedly list themselves as single-unsingle-single-unsingle, etc. As we all grow and mature (and get old), I hope that they, like myself, have kept a part of those crazy classroom days with them.

So this entry is dedicated as a thanks to my old students. Thank you:

• for being patient while I try to explain extremely dry material - believe me, I didn’t enjoy it either,
• for participating in our weekly "challenge questions" (such as "good-guys bad-guys"! It was hard explaining to your parents why there were shreds of paper with smiley/angry faces all over the room),
• for being on time even though I’m always late (but I always had an excuse, didn’t I?),
• for politely laughing at my corny, corny jokes…
• and then letting me make fun of you in return.
• for understanding that verbal class is not about early vocabulary; it’s about playing games and making huge posters (I still have them with me!)
• [and for those who came to my little Summer Camps] for going along with all the ‘lesson plans’, when it was clear that we were all there to have fun and eat bad food.

[This is unrelated to my project]

Today’s the 50th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a book that, in a nutshell, pretty much changed much of my life in the past few years. 

For fellow Ayn Rand fans… This is John Galt Speaking.

My copy of the book, complete with highlights, scribbles, and dog-eared pages, goes with me where ever I go (and yes, I also took it with me to Bangladesh). To celebrate this day, here are some selected quotes from this incredible book.

"An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind."

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."

"She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought—and never worried about it again."

"For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it."

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? …We want them broken… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt."

"It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener."

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

"An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error."

"Love is our response to our highest values"

As part of GSM’s 20th year anniversary, the association hired TelecomTV to go around the world filming 20 countries being changed by mobile technology; the documentary will be previewed at the GSM Mobile Asia Congress next month in Macau, and premiered at several film festivals next year. Today was a blur of logistics as we guided a camera crew to film areas of my project.

Now that I am properly situated back at my desk, I thought this would be a good time to give an update on the absolute highlight of my time here - my project

The main challenge is to figure out how to link the development of industry skills to a longterm overall strategy of alleviating poverty. It’s a complex topic, but we’ve made incredible progress. Perhaps the best way to explain our model in a nutshell is as follows (yes, I will forever be a Visio dork):

The advantages here are that companies save recruitment and post-entry training costs, and the students are guaranteed employment. But the even COOLER part is that we’ve been able to turn CompanyABC into huge telecom players such as Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, and SchoolDEF is a nonprofit technical school created especially for underprivileged youth - the school is unique in that its focus is not to develop scholars, but to provide a means for these urban slum children to get the employment to support their families (No, child labor here is not a controversy. It is simply reality).

I love this project from two main angles -

1. It is sustainable. I’m not a fan of companies going out of their way to ‘give’ and ‘donate’ money with the intention of making any kind of big social change. Companies exist because they make profit, not because they are charity houses. To guarantee that a social investment actually lasts beyond its marketing appeal, corporate initiatives to address social issues should first and foremost guarantee that the company is either generating income, or reducing costs. Period.
2. I’m a huge fan of children’s education - I spent years teaching children on weekends at Hope Chinese School, did an entire undergrad thesis on underprivileged youth education (which I unfortunately couldn’t be there to finish, but my team did an incredible job!), and plan to invest in schools in developing countries when I’m old, retired, and rich.

I love it. 

And I love the children. Being there and interacting with these kids is amazing. Seeing how eager they are to learn, despite their socio-economic status, despite their full-time jobs (they have to work to support their families)  makes me somewhat embarrased about our own attitudes towards education back home. They literally drag me around to demonstrate how to assemble a TV, make a booklet, fix a car engine, or sew dress shirts. I try to communicate with them using the two Bengali phrases I know, and they respond back in broken English. But I think we get along just fine. And today, one of the girls asked me for an autograph, and said something about wanting to be like me when they they grow up. I smiled, but with a lump in my throat.

Dear Fuchkas,

You are amazing. I can’t get my hands off of you. I have swallowed my pride, over and over again, to get you to love me. But you give me nothing but pain. How can you be so cruel?

But guess what? You’re going to need a restraining order to avoid me.

I’m not giving up.  I’ll see you tonight, dear!

Love,

Crazy Foodie 

- edit -

Just want to note: the food above is pronounce "Foosh-kas." And it really is amazing.  

One of the inconveniences we have to put up with when working here in Bangladesh is the unstable access to the internet. Like the random electricity outages we experience, being able to connect through the web is usually a hit or miss. As political events recently have proved, its weak infrastructure makes it possible to, at any point in time, completely disconnect an entire country from the global network.

Did you know that fiber-optic broadband appeared in Bangladesh only two years ago? Here’s a little background. Remember the bubble back in the mid 90’s? During the excitement, all the telecoms went crazy and began investing ridiculous amounts of money into laying fiber optic cables all over the world. Because of this, countries that couldn’t afford the technology got it for free, and the entire world became connected on the investor’s dollar. This played a huge part in shaping the world as it is today: the cables sat around largely unused for a while, but when the bubble burst, panicking companies scrambled to stay out of bankruptcy by looking for ways to reduce cost and do business on the cheap. They looked east, and found countries, namely India, that not only understood the English language and had highly skilled workforces, but also, now thanks to the freebie fiber optic cables, made communications seamless and extremely cheap. Welcome to the birth of offshoring, and the rise of Asia.

Amongst all the commotion, Bangladesh, straddled between India and China, was largely ignored. Apparently, when all the foreign money was being poured into laying cable across the continent, Bangladesh had resisted, because of bureaucratic, political reasons that even its people aren’t able to understand.

Finally, sometime around 2005, its government finally woke up and decided that in order for Bangladesh to play any real part of the world economy, it needs to first connect itself. So it spent about $100 million (of its own money this time) to catch up. A decade later.

Now, sit back, and think about how our lives have changed in the past 10 years because of the internet (remember that horrible dial-up modem?). Think about the way in which our global economy has changed because of it. A full decade - and Bangladesh had missed out on the entire thing. Although more attention has been paid to this country recently as companies look beyond India/China for affordable labor and untapped markets, it’s still sad to think about how Bangladesh might have been today had things been different.

But I’m determined to end this entry on a positive note. Despite all of this, and despite its share of natural disasters and political mess, there’s a momentum of positive energy here. The people seem to be less dependent on the government and keen to make progressive changes with their own hands.  The majority world may have first heard about it when Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace prize in 2006 for his invention of the microcredit model, but development activity has been happening years before, and continue to be a huge focus for everyone - rich or poor. The energy is contagious.

A few other random things:

• Thanks to the speed of the postal service, I’ve begun to receive birthday packages, a month later!! My friends and family are amazing - what would I do without you guys?
• I was trying to break a record for being here the longest without being ‘affected’ by the food. That didn’t work out quite well - several weeks ago, my body finally decided to take revenge, and rewarded me with an entire week of keeping absolutely nothing down, fun hallucinations, and an exhilarating trip to the hospital. My local colleague/client, with whom I’ve bonded well with, accompanied me throughout the experience. This, although deathly embarrassing, also means that I can say to all my consulting friends out there - hey guess what? My client is cooler than your client!
• Lastly, and somewhat importantly, Starwood just opened a five-star Westin in downtown Dhaka! Although I can’t even imagine checking into a hotel like that with my current budget, I visited it this weekend to reminisce about my past life. I jumped onto the Sweet Sleeper bed on display in the lobby, rode the escalator up and down a few times, and discovered…food! My friends, you simply cannot begin to imagine the rush of seeing all that familiar food, all together, all at once. I mean, these people were not joking around - there was: REAL BAGUETTES. SMOKED SALMON. BROCCOLI. CHEESE. AVOCADO. REAL CHOCOLATE (Yes, I’m yelling in my head). Nevermind that a baguette cost the equivalent of $4, and the buffet cost us 2,500 TK ($35!). I know, I’m in a developing world, doing development work, experiencing the local lifestyle. But guess where I’ll be this weekend? In the buffet line? You bet!

The internet connection all over the country was cut for the past 24 hours, and apparently has just been repaired. Here’s an entry I wrote while offline yesterday:

I went downstairs and waited for the car that usually comes to pick me up for work, which did not show up. Someone who spoke a little bit of English told me the curfew, which should have ended this morning, is ongoing and may extend for a "long time". I called my local sponsor, my most dependable contact here who’s fluent in English - couldn’t get through. I called my other ADP colleague living a few blocks down the street - no connection. I called everyone on my contact list. What the heck is wrong with my phone? I asked to borrow the phone at the guest house, and was told that the phone networks in the city have been shut off. I logged onto my computer, and the connection was deathly slow, borderline nonexistent. It took me almost 30 minutes to log onto my company network to let my contacts know of my situation. Shortly afterwards, the connection died - and is still dead. I came decently close to having a panic attack.

So I admit. I’m not as mature, stable, and brave as I’d like to be in a situation like this. The English speaking guest house staff hinted to me that I’m overreacting. But since these are the same type of people who can watch fatal accidents in front of them without much more than shrug (as i wrote about in the previous entry), their words do not bring me too much consolation. No, I’m not exactly afraid that the rioting will directly put my life in danger. The terror that welled up inside came from the realization that I am right in the middle of a major national crisis, and yet at the same time am completely detached from it because of the language barrier. With all that’s going on a few blocks away, with all the talk on the news and amongst the neighbors, I alone am clueless to their words. It’s a workday, and yet there’s not a sound outside my door - imagine midtown Manhattan completely empty at 8 in the morning. I turn on the TV, and flip through intense Bangladeshi news channels I can’t understand to pause on the English speaking ones - Discovery Channel is showing a special on monkeys. Another channel’s airing an old Seinfeld episode. BBC was giving the sports update. It’s the calm right before a huge storm. It feels almost surreal.

The panic is also brought on by seeing that both access to communication and transportation I’ve come to rely on can all of a sudden, and all at once, become nonexistent. If something were to happen, I can’t physically get anywhere - streets are closed, no cars, no rickshaws. I can’t reach an agent to book a ticket, I can’t make a call to let anyone know of my situation, I can’t use the internet to send a note out. In such a situation, I am flat out of options. It’s claustrophobic. The realization is debilitating.

Yes, I’m long overdue an update. Here’s a quick one - I’ll write more in the evening.

This is a note to say that I am safe. After hearing from some of you from back home, I’m surprised to see that news of the violence here has made it back so quickly. Here’s a quick recap of the situation from my end. Over the past few months there had been several riots and protests over the political situations here, but all of them were put under control quickly. All of a sudden, on Tuesday, there was an extremely violent riot at the downtown University here (extremely close by). I was told that student protests here are quite different from those in the States. Instead of symbolizing the exercise of public opinion, student demonstrations are almost always promoted/instigated/backed up by political influence from either side of the two opposing parties (and that’s all I’ll say about that here). Apparently the violence continued until yesterday evening, and led to several shootings. Most of us were largely unaware of the relative seriousness of it (since this wasn’t the first public protest) until early afternoon when the military declared an 8 PM curfew for the entire city. Office buildings were shut down early and we all go off work around 4.

It was extremely quiet at night - almost eerily so. I did hear a few loud whistles now and then, but beyond that I was more or less safe and oblivious in my room with my dal, naan, and old episodes of the Sopranos.

The concept of life and death is a bit different here. Maybe it’s because death is seen as a natural part of the cycle, or perhaps it happens so often here that the shock of individual deaths is absorbed by acceptance that it’s just one more death. But for me, this is still largely frightening. Once, we were driving on the highway and witnessed a traffic accident, where a taxi car was almost completely buried under a truck. To my complete bewilderment, traffic went on as normal, and those who stopped did so briefly before moving on. I was told that although ambulances and emergency rescue teams "exist", the chance that they would show up within 2 hours, or at all, is slim. That is if they could be reached in the first place.

Another time, a few of us were on a train to visit some nearby tea plantations.  Halfway on our journey, the train made a sudden stop, and we were temporarily stationed in the middle of nowhere amongst farms and rice fields. Curiously enough, no one bothered to get out of their seats or stray from their conversations. Likewise, we oblivious foreigners followed suit and continued with our card games. After more than an hour, we (ok, I) got a bit cranky, so a friend who knew some Bangla went to investigate. From what he understood, there was either something wrong with the train or we had hit something on the tracks, but the train’s sudden stop caused the operator to fall out of the car. The last hour was spent clearing the fatal accident and looking for someone else to operate the train. Just like that. I was sick to my stomach the entire rest of the ride. And what’s most disturbing to me is that I doubt either of these incidents made it in the local newspaper, which dedicates half its space to political news and the other to describing the ‘latest’ news on reducing calories in meals while advertising "American-flavored potato chips."

And on that note, I should now go get ready for work. The curfew will likely last for a few days, so I’ll use the extra time tonight to give some other, less morbid updates. 

Yesterday, my company’s "Global Asset Protection" power team went crazy looking for me because I had given them an outdated contact number. Today, they emailed me more urgent information regarding the political instability here in the city, such as the following excerpt:

Security: UPDATE 1: Police on high alert as protests erupt across Bangladesh July 17, following arrest of AL leader Sheik Hasina Wajed. Avoid all demonstrations.

This alert affects Bangladesh.

This alert began 17 Jul 2007 09:14 GMT and is scheduled to expire 23 Jul 2007 23:59 GMT.

Protests erupted across Bangladesh July 17 in response to the recent arrest of former Prime Minister and Awami League (AL) leader, Sheik Hasina Wajed. Several protests turned violent as AL supporters clashed with security forces. Avoid all demonstrations. Expect increased security in cities across the country.

Protests in Dhaka were especially violent. Three home-made bombs exploded at Dhaka University as students took part in nationwide university strikes. Officials report no injuries in the attack. Security forces fired shotguns at protesters who gathered in Goal Nagar and Malitola areas and on English Road in the old part of Dhaka, injuring at least 30 demonstrators. Pro-AL lawyers gathered at the Court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) in Dhaka as Hasina arrived for the start of her trial.
 

In a nutshell, for the past couple of months there was a ’showdown’ of sorts between the country’s two competing governments (who have been battling one another for years now), causing an incredible amount of instability in the political arena and hostility out on the streets.  As a result, an interim, ‘caretaker’ government stepped up to fill its place until a permanent one can be chosen. So yes, we are currently living without a government. And yesterday, security forces raided the home of the leader and Prime Minister of one of the parties, arresting her under murder allegations and corruption charges. So expectantly, all hell broke lose.

The political situation here in Bangladesh is an interesting topic that I’d love to dedicate an entire entry to talk about. However, today’s is not such an entry.

It’s been a while since I’ve last updated. Mostly it’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time on my project (and not because i was lazy or anything). Since my project is in its beginning phases, I’ve been involved in much of the planning, strategizing, and conceptualizing. Today marks somewhat of a milestone, as I finally presented my proposal and recommendations to the board. I needed their approval so that I can tap into their resource/talent pool to actually carry out the plan.

The presentation meeting can be summarized into three major areas:

* Before: As usual, the assistants came around to pass out cups of tea and biscuits. And as usual, I was the only female in a group of male managers. What started out as polite introductions and questions about my home country begin morphing into comments about my looks, my appearance, and ‘light’ jokes about why everyone actually showed up to meeting today. So there I was, sitting professionally at the front of the table in my suit, a smile plastered across my bright red face as I gave myself a silent reality check - are these guys really having this conversation? with me right here? Should I say something in return?

* During: I lost my bright cheerful Jeni-smile as the no-nonsense side of me kicked in. I went through my proposal, detailing out my plan, its value potential, and the commitment I needed from their end. One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that when speaking about things that I am passionate about, I become extremely energetic (sometimes a bit too much), and I think it shows. Much of that energy today, though, was also fed from the audience. Everyone was extremely attentive, and all eyes and ears (well, all eyes until you establish eye contact with them, which is when they quickly look away). They listened to my points, but also felt completely at liberty to [politely] disect and rip them apart. Nonetheless, it made for an engaging discussion.

* Afterwards: Presentation ended on a high note. Got the buy-in from all the stakeholders, and the chairman announced that he was very impressed! Woohoo! (these are the finer moments of being a consultant!) After a quick concluding discussion, there was a brief period of silence, during which I was convinced that everyone was deep in thought about my proposal. Then someone broke the silence - "Okay, no more business. Basketball, anyone?"

There you go - that, my friends, is a glimpse of a typical work day. The experience here is worth its value in gold.

Oh, and I got myself an intern! Here’s our initiation event for him - at New Market, a ginormous outdoor shopping area packed with all kinds of random household items for sale.

[edit]pictures to be provided later, as the hosting site for my pictures is being a bit wack.

Somehow being 7867.90 miles away from home actually makes it easier to look at my country and appreciate it for all its beauty. I know, flip through any newspaper or current events magazine, and we’d see that in many ways we’re probably not where we’d ideally like to be. We’re not perfect, and perhaps in some ways we’re pretty far away from it. But the beauty lies in our ability to define what we think means to be perfect, and in the choice to strive towards that definition. The beauty also lies in our ability to understand, to know. For example, I know that being a Chinese American does not mean I am a Chinese living in America, but that I am a type of American. I know that not aligning myself to a religion does not mean I am not a spiritual person, but that I have the freedom to critically think and decide for myself what I want to believe in. I know that freedom of speech, press, and petition, are not just words on paper but powerful, tangible rights of mine that no one can take away from me. From half a world away, these are things that are the most obvious to see.

I remember learning to say the pledge of allegiance in school shortly after I moved to the states. I learned to recite the entire thing without even knowing which syllables belonged together in a word, or what any of the words individually actually meant. But I guess to a child, with a hand over her heart, and her eyes on the red, white, and blue hanging above, it doesn’t have to mean anything more than just that.

You’re still a beautiful grand old flag. Forever in peace may you wave.