An Invite to My Wedding :-)

So I wrote the entry below while at work today but couldn’t upload it since I don’t have web access (imagine!) there. And then I tried uploading at my friend Shezami’s house but that didn’t work either since we were running late for a hookah session at this really nice lounge near my workplace J but now I’m finally home and can update my blog. Two random things have happened in the meantime that I must share!

Okay so everyday at lunchbreak at work, I go down to this dinky storage room where they have a treadmill (apparently it’s there fitness room but no one uses it) and use it for about a half hour. Today the guard who logs me in, came in and chatted with me for a few minutes. Our whole conversation was just hillarious, actually it wasn’t even a conversation, it was just her talking and me panting in response. So some background on the guard: younger than me probably, married, illiterate, really naïve and a sweetheart. Lol so she comes and asks me why I was doing what I was doing and then she answers it herself saying something along the lines of “oh, is it to loose weight? But you don’t look like you have lost any” and then when I laughed, she went on to try and make it a little better and she was like “ you’re not so bad looking, it’s only the weight and your front tooth that juts out a little”. And then she couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t married at my age. LOL

Here is where my obsession with skin colors come from. Everytime I fly back home, I have a conversation along the lines of this one with at least one Bengali passenger. This time it was a woman with three unmanageable kids and who understand no English whatsoever. So when the immigration officer in Bahrain started to get annoyed at her, I translater for her. Later on, she asked me if I was Bengali and when I nodded, she went on to ask if I was “original bengali”. Lol whatever that means! I figure I get all these weird questions cos I’m light skinned and when I spoke to my friend Shezami (who is darker skinned and beautiful!) a couple of days back, she told me how everyone in Malaysia (where she used to study) wouldn’t believe she is Bengali and instead would keep asking her if she is Sri Lankan! Lol gotta love our culture! You gotta be the right shade of brown to be Bengali J


I figure it's time I updated my blog and since I'm sitting here at work designing boring data collection forms, I think it's the perfect time. Really, what were they expecting? This is only my second week here and it took me this long to stop being jet-lagged and now instead, i've made up my own timetable much to my mom's dismay. Lol I wake up at 6am and it's my bedtime by 8pm Bangladesh time. It's working perfectly, really. I just need to be awake for work and then a few hours with my family and time to check facebook (notice how it's become a part of my daily schedule) and then back to bed again. I use work time to stay in touch with friends here and I get three day weekends (uhha Guha) so I can meet up with them then.So I should probably start with last week. Unfortunately the highlight (for lack of a better word, I'll try to look up a better one before I post this but incase I don't..) of the week was my Babu Uncle's (Mom's second brother) death. He had been sick and in a lot of pain for a while so apparently this is better. The last time I saw/spoke to him was last year so it's a little hard for me to imagine it and I suppose it's not really gonna hit me unless I go to his house in Chittagong and meet my cousins there. I'm really dreading that and so far I've been able to use work as an excuse to not do it and also cos my mom's is dreading going to his house, but my cousins are leaving for Australia soon so we're probably going to have to do it soon. It's about 6 hours from Dhaka (the capital city, where my parents live but both my parents are originally from Chittagong).I think I want to write about my Uncle today.

My mom has (I've decided it's a little too soon to write had) nine siblings and he was the first to go. I've a million and one cousins, spread out all over the world but my family is quite close (MahshAllah). Of course we also have a million problems, since we're all Bengali and naturally nosy but let's see maybe this will paint a better picture...so when we found out my Uncle had brain cancer, his siblings, kids, neices, nephews, extended cousins, everyone came over from different parts of the world to see him. Those who could afford it, went to see him in Singapore and those who couldn't, visited him here in Bangladesh. So he was kinda like the person holding our family together (I'm really stealing this line from my cousin's blog but I felt exactly the same even before I read hers so I'm gonna write it anyway :)). Of course it was my Grandmother doing that when she was alive but it was definitely Mejo mama later.

It's somehow more painful because he lived in the house where our parents grew up and my Grandmother lived until her death. It's a huge empty house right now.The people I've shown photos of our family home in Khondokia (which is our village in Chittagong) to- he designed it and actually helped build it. I wish you guys could see it. It's beautiful, huge and open. It has that one big room for mejbaans (huge family lunch (a Chittagonian thing) during which they actually slaughter cows and goats the day of the event and also everyone from the neighborhood comes and usually the only food is really spicy meat and really think rice and daal (lentil soup)), lunches and dinners and also where most of the kids sleep (on the floor) when we go to visit. And then a couple of bedrooms on the second floor for our moms and he built the beds with the wood from the trees that had been cut off to clear the land. He even built the second floor balcony in such a way so that the women in our family can look down and see whatever's going on outside on the lawn but not necessarily be seen by the men outside. He built the garage with electrical lines so that if we ever get musicians for some event, they can play there. There is a badminton court on the next plot of land for the kids.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to actually go there for any event so far and it looks like I might just be going there for my Uncle's mejbaan (Instead of a Qul four days after someone dies, we have mejbaans. But you can have mejbaan for any sort of event).I must mention that he even had the clay ovens built just to make naans, somewhere behind the house. I'm not gonna say he was perfect but he definitely knew what he wanted and how to go about getting it :). When I saw it for the first time, I want to say maybe two summers back, I told him that I was gonna have my mehendi (the singing/dancing/henna night that brides and grooms have before the wedding) there and he became so happy. I just said it in passing cos it's perfect for an event like that but he went around telling everyone in our family so I decided some time back that I'm definitely having my mehendi there InshAllah. I haven't decided when I'm getting married or to whom, but those are minor details that can be worked out later.I should probably go back to work now but I just wanted to end this by inviting you all to my mehendi/wedding. Like I said before I don't know when, but the mehendi's gonna be in Khondokia InshAllah :)

From Boston to London, Bahrain, Muscat and then finally Bangladesh after 27 hours :)

It was an interesting journey to say the least. I started out next to an eccentric Irish man who kept laughing to himself for most of our 7 hour plane ride to london! Before I write anything else about him, I just have to write about how this was the first time, they decided not to harrass me at Logan! Lol interestingly, they did stop me for a second security check right before we were about to board the plane but the security men who had opened my bag were too distracted discussing a book in my bag, "Catch me if you can" that I had borrowed from Becky to read on the plane. The only question they ended up asking me before zipping up my bag was to ask if I had watched the movie. If any of you are interested, it was highly recommended by quite a few people on my various flights.

I found out a bit later that it had been the American concept of size that was amusing my fellow Irish passenger. He kept talking about how size 40 in America was huge! Lol I joined in on his laughter but frankly I couldnt understand cos I had just bought some stuff for my dad that were size 40! Maybe it's the Irish who have strange measurements? Oh dear! And the other thing he kept talking about was how fatty the food was and guess what??!? We got these delicious oreo cheese cakes with our dinner and he kept making faces at me while I ate it all!

Lol anyway yah so after I got to heathrow, I stood in line for 3 hours since my flight to Muscat was cancelled due to cyclone warnings and I had to hop onto another plane going to Bahrain and then finally transferred from there to Muscat. After another delay in Muscat for 5 hours, I finally reached Bangladesh at 1130 in the morning.

Ive been asleep more hours then awake since I have been home so I really don't have much to say about it as yet. Ive been waking up at 3 am and sleeping from 12 noon to 6pm. I want to say the weather's been lovely cos it feels like home but all the crazy rain and thunderstorms have caused flooding and made too many people homeless. At the same time everything's green and smells clean and there are kids playing in the rain water everywhere on the streets :) Im trying to take photos to send you guys some soon...