A-TEN-tion!

Ten Good Excuses for Being Negligent of Blog Writing (please accept my humble apologies!)

Good cheers in old Dhaka.  With a fellow Hahvahd alum.

1.   I finally got to play soccer!  Yay for the Banani soccer crowd for letting me come out and join them.  My gender was for the most part a none issue—although once when describing who was on what team, I was referred to as “lady”.  And another discussion in bangla seemed to be whether we could move to shirts vs. skins and I might have been the reason why that got vetoed.    After the game, we all shook hands and they invited me back tonight!

2.  I’ve started a band.  My partner in crime is Showvik, a Dhaka University Law Student who loves “music from the 1960s” and plays the guitar and harmonica.  I, the weak link, am struggle to add the little shaking maracas to my singing.  We took on Dylan and the Beatles at our first rehearsal on Friday, and then performed at my place and at Showvik’s aunt and uncle’s house north of town.  We have some invitations to perform, so we’re working hard on getting a decent set list!  Suggestions for the name of the band are welcome.

3.  I made a female friend and she took me shopping for clothes.    Then we had tea at her house.  Talked about girl things.  It was fun.  Here the norms on touching is that you are really touchy feeling with people of the same gender, so she hugs me a lot and we hold hands.  I think it’s great.

4.   Not to be outdone, my guy friends also took me shopping for clothes.  There was no hand holding, but I did end up buying a pretty cool blue plaid shirt.  And one of the guys bought the same one, same size.  We are going to look awesome when we coordinate our outfits sometime soon.  I’m also psyched because he’s got a huge plaid shirt collection and now that I know we’re the same size……..

5.  Street food finally sucker punched me.  Hard.  Last week I was barely eating anything and dragging myself into the office.  No chance of blogging, at least not saying anything that would entice you all to read it ever again.  Luckily, I’m an optimist so I’ll take that as a fluke.  Green mangoes are appearing on the street and no way am I going to let those sneak by untasted!  Can’t win ‘em all, but you can keep trying.

6.  I finished drafts of four chapters!  Remember, guys, I came here to WORK.  Like I have a job and things.  I write and all that jazz.  Yeah, so someone finally read some of what I’ve been putting done on paper, and they’ve decided that we are “on the right track.”  That is a relief!

7.  Especially since after visiting the passport office three times in one week, they decided to approve my visa extension.  Party!  I can stay until October and I have unlimited entries.  I would hop back and forth over the border with India just to show that I could, but India will only let me in once every 60 days, so that would be anticlimactic.  Think I’d have better luck on the border with Burma?

8.  I attended a party to watch the last match of the Cricket World Cup.  And guess what kids, I figured out who was going to win on my own long before it happened.  So I claim victory over cricket.  But am not sad that the next world cup won’t roll around for four years and be held somewhere else……..note to self, check out that location before planning your next move.

9.  Jamming has become a pretty serious past-time for me.  In the sense that traffic is horrible so it can take an hour to go three blocks.  If there were no traffic in Dhaka, there’s no telling what would happen to the productivity of this city.  Seriously, it’s depressing how much time you can sit in traffic.  At least it gave me a chance to catch a siesta today.

10.  Rain starts any day!  So I’m enjoying these  last weeks of being able to run around before it’s too hot and wet to be fun.  Have some fun adventures to share, so will try to find some time to sit still this weekend and hammer them out.