We're all in this together

I love technology. I love the Internet. I love my lap top. I love mobile phones. I love my iPod. I love electricity. (This last one I shouldn't really say out loud given how most electricity is generated the world over, it's terribly 'unleft' of me).

I especially love these things today because even though I've not left my apartment (thank you recurrent Bangla belly for at least being mild this time) here is what I have done:

* confirmed my flights to Egypt, Turkey and the UK for later this year
* applied for a new passport
* wished my brother safe travels for his flight from Barcelona to Paris this morning, and then discussed the luxury of treating himself to a pair of sunnies from the Louis Vuitton store in Paris this afternoon
* planned, gossiped and joked with my sister
* spoke to my parents
* consoled a friend who had a big one and behaved a little badly last night
* heard from friends in London, Sydney, Brisbane and Bangladesh
* found out about the eradication of smallpox from Larry Brilliant and the future for dealing with pandemics "we [now] live in each others viral environments" (2007, about animals and humans); and Richard Dawkins' view on atheism "we are all atheists about most of the Gods humanity has believed in, some of us just go one God further" (2002)
* listened to The Beatles, Radiohead, Patti Smith, The Pixies, Placebo, and Badly Drawn Boy, and
* watched a Belgian arthouse flick, Le's Enfantes

To do all this I used a mobile phone and a laptop connected to the internet with a SIM card in (another) mobile phone using a data cable with my laptop giving me access to: iTunes, vodcasts and podcasts, skype, a dvd player and facebook, among other things, which made all this possible.

The revolution of communication technologies is incredibly exciting to experience on a professional level for someone who works in communications - especially the drop in costs of communicating globally, and the way that people the world over can collectivise (oohh, sounds scarily communist doesn't it - it's not, I promise) over issues despite not knowing each other from a bar of soap, and being geographically disparate. A perfect example is the current activity on twitter following the Iran election.

Personally, however, it's even better. Communication technology has effectively bridged the gap of living alone in a foreign country, and has made me feel completely connected and part of it all.

While all these electricity-hungry gadgets don't bode well for climate change, I'm eager to see where we go next. Between e mail, text messages, skype, blogs, social networking sites like facebook* and twitter, I know my world has changed for the better. And it looks like I'm not the only one.

*yes, I still think facebook could be better termed stalkerbook, which I guess means I'm a stalker, but I prefer to think that getting good at using this stuff is more preferable to not using it at all. What did Shakespeare say - 'there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so'?

Where did you sleep last night?

Another month in the 'desh has come and gone and I've been a busy little bee, albeit one who feels like it's been blown about in one of the almost daily monsoonal lightening storms here.

This part of the world being as full on as it is means I've had barely any time to really contemplate 'the big questions', like where my next paycheck is going to come from (given I'm at the 8 month mark); I've been far too busy gallivanting around the place. In the past month I've been from the bottom left of Bangladesh (Cox's Bazaar), to Chittagong, Dhaka, up to Kishoregonj and Netrakona (which has the best food in the 'desh I've had so far), back to Dhaka, across to Kolkata in India for a long weekend, back to Dhaka and back to Chittagong. Don't ask me what day it is. Actually, don't ask me anything important for the next five days, which I am planning to spend catching up on sleep and generally enjoying my own bed, coconut husks and all.

The advantage of running around the place as if I was conducting my own personal Amazing Race, er, without a partner and the tv crews and glamorous locales (jeez, quite a stretch I'm making there...) is that I've done some pretty cool things like:




Given a poetry reading




Watched storm clouds roll in from a boat in Kewajore

Kewajore, a remote part of the Kishoregonj region, is flooded for six months of the year. It took 3 hours to travel less than 30 kilometres to get from Kewajore out to one village in the area. Crazy. When we finally got there, I spent the day trying not to appeal to every villager in sight to jump on our boat and head on out of there (ok, not really, it was a small boat and I had one of only two life jackets) because it is simply insane living that close to flood waters, which as far as I can tell is only going to end badly in a country wracked with natural disasters. It was a big lesson in understanding just how little land there is available in this country, forcing people to live on the equivalent of a sandbar at the beach.




Visited the Opera House of Kishoregonj

While I was wandering the streets of Kishoregonj, a local lad latched on to me, and offered to give me a walking tour of the city including the "city highlight": the oldest water tree in Kishoregonj. Tourism Australia, eat your heart out.

My trip to Kishoregonj was followed directly by hightailing it out of the country to:




Drink champagne




and cocktails




with the girls - Natalie and Casey




in Kolkata

Which while it wasn't quite the oasis I was hoping for (perhaps I should have twigged that a half hour flight to another part of Bengal, even if it is in a different country, may not result in a drastic change in culture), Kolkata still offered enough of the good stuff to keep us entertained.

To prove that it wasn't all about the booze, we took in a few cultural sites, the highlight for me being:




Mother Teresa's Home for the Destitute and Dying

I've never seen such high quality care being given to older (dying) people before, en masse. Clearly they have no staffing issues since there were plenty of volunteers, and I imagine the funding streams are fairly consistent for a charity (though this place is a strictly 'bare-bones' affair), but still. I was impressed, and even left a bit speechless at the good work being done.

As for how the weekend ended? Only with the worst flight I've ever been on, and I've flown Aeroflot.

It involved:
- a dead body: the man who died as we were boarding our plane in Kolkata,
- a five hour delay,
- a mini-revolt: staged by (male) passengers desperate to get off the plane to perform their prayers even though we had boarded the plane and were about to take off, complete with trying to get into the cockpit and banging fists against the plane doors,
- flying through a lightening storm: because turbulence was what the already agitated passengers on this flight needed, and
- men behaving badly (again): by refusing to stay seated with the plane was taxiing, and instead pulling luggage from overhead lockers and crowding the aisles before the plane had even stopped.

All this was topped off by a midnight traffic jam in Dhaka, which was about the point where my frazzled nerves gave up on me, and I spent the taxi ride holding my head in my hands, eyes shut, sweat dripping down my back, pledging that I would give my left kidney to spend 24 hours in a country that worked.

But now I'm back in Chittagong and I've done the grocery shopping and spoken to the family, and had a long cool shower and (this part) of the world seems like a better place again. Life on the merry-go-round is set to continue too as I prepare the cultural program for my first visitors!

Penny and Sally, don't forget your insect repellent, sunscreen, and duty free quota of 2 litres - you'll need all of them where we're going...

Today's Lesson

Guilt. Five letters. Implies regret for an action(s), intended or unintended.

I’m carrying around bucket-loads of it at the moment. Which could seem out of place given that I’m not exactly living the high life, or taking it easy on the work front, or earning money, or doing a whole host of other things that normally induce feelings of guilt in me (eating the whole pad thai myself/ordering a second bottle of wine, then a cocktail, on a school night/driving instead of walking/paying $100 for a pair of shoes/choosing the magazine insert over the actual paper…)

But I feel guilty nonetheless. I feel guilty when I walk past beggars, guilty when I spend AUD$10 on a meal, guilty when I want to go home alone and have a glass of wine rather than ‘gossip’ with my non-drinking colleagues, guilty that I live in a lovely apartment, guilty that I splurge on olives and flavoured soy milk and diet coke, guilty that I’m not working harder or longer or faster or better. Guilty that I’m not reading more, learning more, writing more, engaging more with the world.

If I was to pick what I feel most guilty about, though, it would be that I have been born into a culture which affords me the choices and possibilities, (as both a person and a woman) which have led to this opportunity to work overseas with the support of my government in an area I feel ever more passionate about. And for that I am very, very grateful.

If you’re looking for me this evening, here’s what I’ll be up to:

guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful,guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful,guilt grateful, guilt grateful, guilt grateful...

Shelter from the storm

While I was busy entertaining the Chittagongian city-folk during Cyclone Aila, the coastal areas and islands in Bangladesh were (and still are) having a tougher time of it. In terms of cyclone severity, it didn't rate very high on the danger scale, however so much damage has been caused because the cyclone hit at high tide, which meant already high waters just went higher, and higher, and higher...

Here's a pretty accurate account of what the situation is from the BBC:

A little rain - little water song - city rain/city streets

My monsoon look

Confession: I am enjoying a natural disaster. I know this means I'm playing with karma, and earning some of the negative kind, but I can't help it. My paltry excuse is that I am from a country where the Google keyword search results for "drought" would number in the quadbillions (if there is such a thing) so I have a reason to get all excited over rain.

But I know it's wrong and I feel awful for all the areas being completely devastated by this weather depression/tropical storm/cyclone (depending on which disaster warning you read) currently taking over the Bay of Bengal. I also suspect that since this is just the beginning of the monsoon season I'm about to get very unexcited by rain, so expect my fascination to dissipate rapidly.



Off come the thongs

In the meantime though, I had fun tonight entertaining the locals who found the dripping wet white girl absolutely hilarious. I think I made more people smile and laugh in one half hour tonight than ever before. Especially when I took out the camera - thongs in hand - and waded through the water* to get home.



*I know, I know, there was a lot more than 'water' being waded through, and yes Mum - and all the other medicos/water nerds in the fam - the minute I walked through the front door I went straight to the shower and scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed

[Irrelevant bit - there are many, many, many song titles containing water, rain, and floods and I couldn't settle on one so have gone for three. The excess fairly reflects what's happening outside my window right now anyway]

What if no one's watching?

Humans are social creatures. This is not some epiphany I woke up to this morning over my (non existent) cornflakes. Really smart people with degrees n stuff have asserted this theory many times over - too many for me to list them here. And while that's all very good and well, frankly I'm far more interested in what happens to humans when they can't be social. Luckily I'm conducting my own human experiment into the phenomenon through living alone in a city where I know no one in a country where being alone is as foreign a concept as toilets that flush. To both myself and my colleagues, my daily activities are being studied like that of a lab rat in a see-through cage.

Here's a snapshot of things I am learning:
* I like that no one knows I ate Ovaltinies for breakfast, in my undies, listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
* Flying solo means there are no support troops to assist in my ongoing War Against Roaches
* There is no one else to blame when I run out of toilet paper, or juice, or gin

And here's a snapshot of things I am learning specifically about myself:
* I have depressing and repetitive taste in music when left to my own devices
* In fact, a lot of what I do when left to my own devices is repetitive: I cook the same meals (as in pasta six nights in a row this week, with the same six ingredients), listen to the same music (Bon Iver repeated 17 times so far), and stalk the same five people on facebook even though I have another 102 'friends' to stalk
* I actually love being alone for about three consecutive days, but know when I start conversations with my fridge, the fan (particularly when the power is out), my thongs (my brown Havianas, not my black ones), or my favourite packet of incense (jasmine, from Nepal) - that I've reached my Healthy Limits of Aloneness.
''
Having reached such a limit this week, I unusually accepted a colleague's (let's call her Sarah for ease of storytelling) offer to spend the evening with her. Unusual because usually the last thing I want to do is hang out with work people all night when I've been hanging out with them all day - and I've never been a fan of talking about work 24 hours a day. So normally I'm quite happy to leave work talk largely to work time, and spend the rest of my free time debating with people not from work whether PJ Harvey's new album is ace (it is), whether Government-Government aid creates more problems than it solves (still chomping through this one, the arguments are a mouthful), or pondering whether I should blow a week's food budget on one expensive but unbelievably enjoyable tofu bento box when next in Dhaka (of course).

Okay, so now I should clarify that my colleagues are not privy to the actual day to day minutiae of my 'alone' life (unlike you, you lucky devils) - rather their curiosity and interest stems to taking alternate responsibility for inviting me to lunch, inquiring as to my weekend plans, asking if I cook my own meals etc etc. Basically as a culture where extended families live on top of each other, their concern at my solo-living is both genuine and endearing, and in a bid to make me feel less alone they ask every day how my parents are, how my brother and sister are, and whether I have considered their offer to find me a good Bangladeshi boy to marry (since that clock is ticking, you know). While it can be annoying, on the whole it's pretty flattering that they care. I'm not sure if the situation was reversed I'd be as thoughtful and attentive to a new colleague back home.

After spending two hours at Sara's place, meeting her family, talking through power and gender issues she's having at work, and generally having a really great chit-chat, I confess to being relieved when my rickshaw departed that I was being delivered to the doorstep of my deserted apartment. There are seven people living in three rooms (including the kitchen) in Sarah's place. Their front door is never closed. Personal space is an impossibility. Sarah has absolutely no idea what it's like to eat Ovaltinies in her undies for breakfast while listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. More to the point, Sarah probably doesn't ever want to know what this is like.

Lucky for me I'm not Sarah, and lucky for Sarah she's not me.

I was only 19

In an unusual move I am taking the time out of my Bangladeshi adventures to add my two cents worth in to the The Matthew Johns Incident even though I’m far away and even though it’s no doubt been done to death in the Australian media and even though I see so much worse on a daily basis in terms of the treatment of women and the construction of masculinity and femininity here in the ‘desh but … this particular media issue has basically enraged me more than most, and the subsequent Facebook retaliation of ‘bring back the biff’ and other such ‘support matty’ groups leaves an awful taste in my mouth.

For a more articulate and considered position on the issue than I can muster right now take a peek at this response by Rachel Hills, a young Sydney based journo firmly in my age group.

My response:

I've tried picturing myself at 19, buoyed on the confidence of too much champas (ok, let's pretend I would not have been skolling Bicardi Breezers), in a room with an older (semi) famous sportsman flattering me enough to part with my clothes and then trying to work out what to do as another (semi) famous sportsman and then another (semi) fam.., and another, and.... until I couldn't help but want to run and hide from the naive, insecure, inexperienced and easily (mis)led girl I remember I was when I was 19.

Consent; rape; power; age; masculinity; femininity; just say no; she didn't say no; we should all say no; oh to be a footballer's wife; oh to be older; did she say no? I don't remember; what goes on tour; just get over it; she's in it for the money..........whatever

To borrow (and slightly amend) from Redgum: "She was only 19".