I took this photo on Friday, right before I packed the flag for my big trip ahead. The plan was to hoist it on to the car that I’ll be driving to Mongolia over the next month. But today, I have nothing to be proud of. In a country where a little boy gets tortured…
Category: Culture
Say nothing at all
You know what’s more annoying than হুজুগে বাঙালী turning their profiles into rainbow colors supposedly in ignorance? YOU, the obnoxious, self-righteous prick pretending to know better and shooting down LGBT rights on the basis of religion, calling it haram. The amount of hateful, intolerant posts I’ve seen leads me to believe that if you spent…
Aunties, leave your Bollywood at home
My experience with the Dhaka gym scene is likely to be as brief as my twice-a-year trips back home. While I generally tend to be a couch potato during my visits, attempting to spend as much time as possible with my parents and stuffing my face silly with good food, I had something additional on…
A helpful guide to deleting your XING profile
If you thought getting out of your gym contract in Germany was hard, try deleting your XING profile. For those unfamiliar with the platform, it is a German language version of LinkedIn. Not only is it completely useless, it is hard to use and even harder to get out of. I had been trying for…
Not my body
Anyone who has unknowingly signed up for a day in the sauna in Germany is bound for some culture shock. If you have friends who were kind enough to let you know how saunas ‘work’ in this country, you’ve probably had the good, common sense to steer clear. While I was warned about having to…
Oh, just stop it
I believe the ball first started rolling after the decisive victory Germany earned in the semi-finals with Brazil. Rape and Nazi jokes started flooding social media. Reasons why analogies with rape for a sporting event is not just distasteful but appalling has been covered in this excellent article by Rashaam Chowdhury. I wanted to talk about…
That little green booklet
I’ve recently had to renew my passport. I was out of pages. Ever since my brand-new, yet-still-handwritten passport came back from the embassy in Berlin, I’ve been feeling bouts of nostalgia. I’ve had my old, worn-out, faded passport for the past eight years, and they have been the most exciting years of my life –…
And what are your values?
The recent post about Bangladeshis having sex seems to have attracted a lot of attention. This should not surprise anyone. However, I probably expected most people to ostracize me, rather than to promote the piece through social media. I have been left positively impressed, to say the least, with the response I’ve gotten so far….
Have sex. Or don’t. Just don’t be a hypocrite.
I noticed last night a post floating through social media on how at an event in North South University, my alma mater, free condoms were distributed as an effort to raise awareness about AIDS. From the information that I could pick up, the event was organized in collaboration with or with support from UNICEF. Of…
Of flashing blue lights
I was driving back from work earlier this evening, when blue lights somewhere off in the distance behind me started flashing. Being ever careful, I checked the speedometer to see if I was speeding (I was not – I’m still waiting for the day I’ll get a ticket for driving too slow on the famous…
Move over, James Bond
I work for a global company with almost half a million employees worldwide. While this makes for a work culture that can be incredibly rewarding through interactions with colleagues from almost everywhere, there can be situations that can leave you, for lack of a more eloquent expression, saying, “WTF?” I work in business development and…
Right place, wrong show
Even after having lived in Germany for nearly five years now, I still occasionally succumb to embarrassing situations. Like last night. My friend and I were very excited about going to a stand-up comedy gig in English. IN GERMANY. Doesn’t happen all that often, even though there’s a fair amount of English-speaking comedians in this…