Annie get your gan

I can't believe how fast January flew by!  It was an incredible month!  Brief highlights:
1.  FINALLY seeing the new version of footloose.  Seriously, the remake did not disappoint me in the slightest.  It takes itself every bit as seriously as possible.  However, I have a serious medical condition that it confirmed: when I watch a movie on a plane, I always tear up.  This was no exception.  The dialog is just really moving, and gosh they dance with such emotion!  I also cried during House, 30-rock, and Friends, but stopped short of crying during Parks and Rec, thankfully.  Not that the people next to me were any less annoyed by my outbursts of cackling laughter.
2.  Visiting the fam at home in NC.  It was a chance to go on some quiet runs, drink lazy lattes, lounge in flannel pajamas; all the finer points of life.  I learned that when I leave my cousins, they just grow like crazy!  All my boy cousins are taller than me now!  Their voices are deeper, they drive, they have girlfriends (or at least girls that they text with and blush about when I ask questions).  I also got pampered with my Aunt and grandmama and got a manicure/pedicure.  You better believe that I had a bling french manicure (and gunmetal toenails to boot) for the next week or so.    I also have probably the largest collection of NC pecans in Dhaka.  Plus Michael Porter's beast of a book on Redefining Healthcare.  Because everyone needs one of those on their bookshelf at work.

Obligatory reflective year-end blog post

I've had a hard time writing on my blog recently.  There are two main reasons that I can think of for this.  First, much of my recent exploration has been internal, contemplative in nature vs. meeting random strangers in random places.  I'm not sure that's as interesting to others.  Secondly, the truth about good writing is that the actually writing only accounts for about 10% of the quality.  The quality of the ideas and the mental process to refine them is the bulk of what's required.  My brain has been consumed in the last month by "work" (loosely defined).  Again, since the purpose of this blog is not to spend hours expounding on the precise definition of "innovation" or translating a mission into a strategy and integrating that into an organizational culture.....see I can feel your eyes glazing over already.....there's been nothing else of adequate quality of thought to pen.  Here's an attempt to create a window into that scary world, bring some of these ideas on "how to change the world" that are percolating internally out into the discourse.
Social change has always seemed fuzzy and ambiguous to me.  I recognize that it happens and is important, but my own interest has always been on the system--the underlying apparatus of levers that create the environment and situations.  I buy the economist idea that people largely behave in predictable ways, so if you know how you want them to behave, just create the right incentives and circumstances.  Social change seems to focus on changing people.  Silly strategy.

Holidays and Hollydays

December 16th is an important day in Bangladesh.  It's "Victory Day," when the war with Pakistan in 1971 ended and Bangladesh truly born.  Today Bangladesh turns 40.  What does that mean, Aunt Connie, should we be having a tacky hat party?  Buying silver?
BRAC's story begins around this same time.  Prior to the Liberation War, there was a devastating cyclone in "East Pakistan," to which the Pakistani government was largely unresponsive.  Fazle Abed organized a small group to lead relief efforts in a particularly remote island that no one was reaching.  The money left over from this organization was redirected once victory was declared, and millions of refugees flooded back in, to build lives from scratch in their newborn country.  This was the humble beginning of BRAC.  I spoke with one of the initial team members at the board meeting last week, and she said, "We had no idea that BRAC would one day be what it is today.  Back then we were just doing what we thought had to get done at the moment."
I found this really inspiring.  To my knowledge, Fazle Abed never said, "I want to build the largest development organization in the world.  One that employs tens of thousands of people, reaches millions, and spans the world."  And yet, here we are, with people like me tasked with detecting and fixing the small ways in which we are victims of our own success.  It's a testament to the power of commitment and action.  A bottoms up approach can build skyscrapers.  Even if you plan creatively, you're still limited to some sense in what you believe is possible.  So perhaps sometimes, or to some extent all the time, leaving some things to chance may be an important part of allowing success to happen.

We lost Jalal

Jalal was one of those people that you felt close to quickly.  I met him at a dinner bringing together people that had lived in Boston.  He arrived very late, but with the type of easy, almost impish smile that made it easy to welcome him into the conversation quickly, and forget within minutes that you’d spent the previous hour wondering where he was.  I didn’t realize right away that he was just visiting from Boston, or had recently been married.  It’s not that he was quiet, but when he spoke it was about the present, light-hearted, even mundane.  Not about the book he was editing, or the other impressive things he worked on.  It was about whether he could join the football games in Banani, the Dhaka party scene, and other normal people topics.

So I was surprised a month or two later when I read an article in Huffington post by Jalal. It was fantastic and got all sorts of wheels turning in my head.  I emailed him back with some reactions, and we got into a follow-up email debate/dialog.  I wasn’t surprised to then see him meeting in North End with my publisher, discussing a book project  of his own.  But always the warmth with which he greeted me was so sincere, his excitement about making plans to make fun things happen so palpable, that it was contagious, and led me to plan things like a semi-“disastrous” music night at North End.  It was one of those where everyone cancels at the last second, including my guitarist!  Luckily Jalal and I were SMSing.  He came late, but with a guitar in hand, and despite hemming and hawing about how rusty his skills were, he turned out to be a great guitarist and decent singer.  I was the one screwing things up; professing to know songs and then realizing mid-way through that really I only knew the chorus.  Or at least a line or two from it.  Asif bhai showed up at one point, and the three of us had a good time trying to harmonize, even if it was a little painful for the other customers.  Jalal was unfazed; he just said it was a learning experience and we’d have to try again.   Maybe practice a bit before then.

From ran to random

Dhaka—people love it, people hate it, but we all agree on one thing: you will never get bored here.  You can count on being surprised, usually several times a day.

As winter season sets in, the days have cooled.  I wear long sleeves all year, but now I can feel like it’s the weather vs. the social conventions that motivate me.  People have pulled out their camo earmuffs already (I’m not quite at that stage yet).  It’s also dried out, which makes it very pleasant for running, minus the dust and smoke from “camp” fires that sometimes results in BB (black boogers).

I walked out the door this morning for my run around 7AM.   I head up to Gulshan Lake Park (where the lake has been dry all year during a series of improvement initiatives) and do a few laps.  There are a lot of people out but traffic is really light on Friday mornings.  No sign of Mr. Khalid, the elderly gentleman who lived in my old building, who does several laps with his cane and loves to hear me say that I went to Harvard, or Andrew, a British colleague of mine who, like Richard Cash, first began working here when it was part of Pakistan!  Beauty before age, at least today!

Thanksgiving din din-ner

In 2008, I was in Bangladesh for Thanksgiving, I was casually invited to join a local celebratory dinner. I show up in jeans, and promptly am introduced to the founder of BRAC and his family, not to mention several other superstars in development.  It was a pretty amazing night--I was so busy trying to maintain my composure and not start shrieking like a teenage girl that I could barely taste the pumpkin pie.

So when that same family invited me to their pre-Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday, I was prepared.  I put on  nice clothes, and slipped into a nice set of shoes (which seemed unnecessary since I would be taking off my shoes at their door, but fashion all seems to fixate on the shoes).  I was not disappointed.  It was different families this time, but equally interesting and fun to chat with.  I learn about the various benefits that other institutions offer expats (everything from the ability to bring things in duty free to an allowance for duty-free alcohol) and talk to the founder of Bangladesh's first mobile money service about how when you visit Boston in the summer, it seems like such a nice place to live.  I first settle into a comfortable chair, noting how much furniture the room has (in contrast to mine), but as the room fills, I slip down onto the floor.  I've gotten more comfortable there, in my austere chairless entertaining set-up.  One woman who lived in Rwanda before moving to Dhaka talks about her set up there, which had a bed, a stool, and a dresser.  I've been avoiding inviting "adults" (people who have families or own things; or just seem generally more responsible than me) to my place because they'll judge me, but I told her she was welcome anytime.  She got it.  And I was not entirely surprised when her husband mentioned that he had 200 climbing handles that he wanted to put up in their house.  They are people who believe in turning a house into a complete living space.  Rock on.  When I find out that he's taken cooking classes and almost became a chef, and she's a killer baker, I decide that these are people that I should really cultivate a friendship with.  Operation make new friends officially begins this weekend, when I start stalking them at the American club.  I knew that membership would come in handy!