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I have not updated my blog for a while. The main reason is the lack of internet connectivity. I mean I have now a monthly mobile internet connection package which performs a lot under its declared speed and it has a monthly cap which prompts me to stick to work rather than play.

We have started the house hunt about ten days ago. We have so far seen more than 15 houses and closing in on one. Meanwhile we have traveled around Jakarta a bit. Went to the Ancol Theme park and the beach and rode on the cable car. (Pics coming up)

Meanwhile our main source of entertainment is the Indonesian language TVs, and we don't understand them. Its good that a couple of channels show English movies (with subtitles) during night. And the Indonesian soaps are also interesting - more complicated than Hindi serials The women are the villains and the men are a naive lot. I was informed by Aparna that some of these soaps are written by Indians - so you get the drift.

Jakarta can be expensive and inexpensive at the same time, depending on your lifestyle. Here riches (and expats) have a completely different lifestyle, close to the Europeans- fully air-conditioned houses and cars, living in good neighborhood, groceries from Carrefour, snacks from Mcdonalds etc and its really expensive in local standard. In Carrefour we did some grocery shopping for the home including fruits and it was almost 50 dollars (500000 Rp)! But again the local wages here is so cheap (a maid at around 100 dollars per month, which is the minimum wages). I wonder how local people survive with this in this expensive city!

E.g. I bought pomfrets from the clean Carrefour at 100000 Rp (10 dollars) and from a filthy local market 25,000 rp per kilo. But I went to the later with one local person who did the talking and bargaining for me and I reckon no western expat goes there. So you see why the knowledge of the market and learning of the local language is crucial.

It rained heavily in Jakarta and some streets were inundated with 1 feet of water. Drains clogged with rubbish-familier scenes I was told. We are of course looking for our houses in flood free areas.

Will keep you posted.

I arrived in London - Stansted airport today well on time. The last time I had a bitter experience of going through the horrors of a cancelled flight and the need to find an alternative flight at another airport to reach on time for my exams. I came one day early just to avoid the stress.

This is a typical UK weather, you never know when it drizzles and when the sun shines. The temperature is just at par with Berlin.

Basically this trip is a deja-vu for me. The Ryan Air flight again landed on time and they played the same taped message cheering the feat. The Italian crew at the Terravision coach spoke terrible English but took us safely to Liverpool Street station. I reloaded my Oyster card bought during previous journey.

This time around there are a lot of constructions going on in London for the 2010 summer Olympics. Improvements are going on in many tube stations. That was a bit of bother to find the way to the destination. I saw a Bangladeshi wedding party on the way. The guests came by bus, women wearing Sari and a lot of makeup. The boys and guys on suits. Reminded me of home.

The next days look more challenging as ACCA mailed me that there is a tube strike which will hamper the journey towards the exam hall. Well I have to work on an alternative route after the first exam. I wonder how London will function without the tubes, which is a lifeline of the mega-city. I can't guess how long will it take in Bus (with dense traffic) for the 1 hour journey in tube, 2 or 3 hours?

The 20-20 world cup is happening right here in UK. Its a shame that I am not able to watch any one in an stadium. I am keeping myself away from TV for the exam preparations. However am cheating myself by watching the game via this site or following in cricinfo. After all what do we live for?

Here is a small video of the landing in Standsted:

It is said that people usually are the happiest at home. The past week proved somewhat different for me. I was just going through the motions, trying to avoid numerous dawaats (treats) by relatives. You know the drill, cousin treats us for lunch at home and uncle treats us for dinner in a restaurant and you see the same faces all over again. I was struggling to find time to meet even few from my long list of friends or do something elsse.

But I should not regret, I could make time to see the Swaraswati Puja in Jagannath Hall of Dhaka University. And I went to the Ekushey Book Fair (Boi Mela) a couple of times. There was another interest to be at the boi Mela, to meet some of the bloggers for the first time. The Bangla blogging platforms Sachalyatan and Somewherein have given the opportunity to know some of the finest young writers of recent times in Bangladesh. Some budding writers who made literary magazines (known in our parts as the little mags) a movement are now using blogs to let their writings known to a lot more readers. And I could meet some of them in the Book Fair and bought some of their books.

Now thw worse part, for the last couple of days I have been sick, first with throat infection and later with diarrhoea. In Bangladesh you don't need to see a doctor as everybody around you knows some kind of medicine which is available in any medicine store without a prescription. I first tried to reduce the terrible coughing with an antihistamine drug which worked miraculously but the fever persisted. When the matter got worse with diarrhoea I went to a doctor today who prescribed an anti-biotic. Lets see if he got it right.

Here are some pictures that will narrate a bit more:

A random vagabond is using the street the voice his opinions (would he like to blog, given the opportunity?)

On the way to the book fair after the security check through a metal detector arch. Hell of a lot of work for the security personnel to screen all those people.

Imperialism: stunning photo collage at Chobi Mela.

Statue of Swaraswati, the Hindu goddes at Jagannath Hall field at Dhaka University. Each department made different statues which were fine in details and great to watch.

Innovative statue of Swaraswati, the Hindu goddes at Jagannath Hall pond.

One fine morning about 100 passengers checked in the Berlin Schoenefeld airport for their Ryan Air flight to London Stansted and were waiting in the boarding lounge. All of a sudden they were asked to vacate the lounge. The immigration police were one the job to reverse the process of immigration and the passengers were wondering why. After a while they realized that the flight was cancelled and this was the reason.

I was one of them. And I had to reach London that day to be able to appear at my exam the next day. After some tensed hours of waiting in queue in front of the ticket desk trying to find out what to do next and the horror of finding that no flights were available in the day, purchasing a new ticket (thanks God the laptop was with me), hours spent in train/bus to reach the other end of the city with all the luggage to board a British Airways flight. By the time I reached in the evening to my destination in London finishing with hours of tube journey I was completely exhausted and almost sick. But at the end of the day I felt that I was lucky to be able to make it.

London is cold, battered with a weak pound but has not lost its usual colors beaming with hope and its wealth of multi-culturism. I framed a shot in my mind while I was in a tube today going towards London Bridge: a few hands clutching on a rod in the packed tube, a few faces moving in and out of the frame; dark, brown, white, Asian, Caucasian, African, young, aged, male, female. This is what I miss in Berlin.

Here are some images of London at dusk:

Wishing everyone a happy Eid wherever you are. Amidst the festivity my thoughts are with these people.

Image Credit: Radiant Guy

This was long due. I was planning to change the template of my blog for better management of contents and I was already getting complaints from the users. I realized that the layout which looks alright in my laptop's wide screen may be shown broken in others pcs.

So I have chosen a new template. I am still fine tuning it. Please let me know your feedback.

After the initial frustrations thanks to a local dealer I finally bought a notebook which could be customized to English version. I have never heard of MSI brand before but this baby looks great with widescreen and is well balanced with configuration at a competitive price. Only I found no webcam attached as advertised. Normal posting will resume shortly.

It seems like ages (actually about 10 days) when I last updated my blog. Well a series of unfortunate events unsettled my internet presence.

First it was the Google spam bot which identified my blog as a splog and locked it. It said if not proven otherwise they were going to delete this blog. It could be the bot or some people may have reported it as so.

I panicked first and tried to contact blogger.com. They only had an automated process of reporting that it is not a spam blog and said it will take them minimum 2 days to review it by a service personnel. After two days there was no update from them so even I created a mirror of this blog in case I lose this space.

In the midst of all these another shocking thing happened. The harddisk of my HP business notebook crashed. Luckily I had bought an external harddisk and have 80% of my data in backup. As far I reckon I have lost some important mail archives, updates of last month's work and some important bookmarks among other things. I don't have another PC here (mine is back in Dhaka) so I was disconnected. The notebook's warranty period is over so replacing it here will cost much time and money. An expert said it may be the harddisk or the controller, in case of later it would take much time to replace.

I am trying to get a new notebook. But now I face another challenge. All the notebooks sold here have German language version of OS pre-installed (most of the offers have Windows Vista) and comes with German keyboard. I need to buy the Full English version of the OS (Windows Vista) which will cost me extra 300 Euro. A mere upgrade (about 100 Euro) will not change the language.

Another options to get it from outside Germany, but that will take some time. So lets see if any breakthrough happens in the meantime. For now I am checking emails from cybercafes.

Today I am delighted to see that my blog has been unlocked. And it seems its not the only one affected. There are confusions all around and conspiracy theories are being circulated.

I only wish this bad patch is over soon.

Update: Blogger admits-

We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam.

We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam.

The weather is slowly getting better here in Berlin. One fine morning I woke up and heard a bird chirping. I took Rianna at the window to inspect the situation. In our backyards there are many trees and a nice childrens park covered in snow. The ice on the branches have melted and we saw a couple of doves in a branch. The sun came out that day. Yes Spring is coming. I sang a rhyme to her:

"Cuckoo, cuckoo
welcome thy sung.
Fresh breeze is blowing,
winter is going,
Spring time, Spring time
soon will be here"

She could only speak the words cuckoo, cuckoo and sang with me.

Last Sunday we took the S-Bahn for sight-seeing. There are special S-Bahn (Street trains) with panorama windows, which go around the street middle in a ring to cover many parts of the city and provide some extra ordinary scenarios. I am sure we will get more beautiful sight of the city in spring or in summer.

I am still awaiting the DSL connection. The modem has arrived last week but sadly the connection will be ready only early next week. There was one computer fair in Berlin this weekend. I went there and bought a couple of things including an used ISDN modem PCMCIA card for my notebook (without manual). Unfortunately the modem did not work probably because of the complicated configuration system. I was depressed because I had to pay Euro 20 for it. S advised me to try to return it on the following day. I was really glad that I could return it without any hassle. I tried a few wireless hotspots but found that I need a credit card to avail the expensive connection. Will explore them once I get my credit card.

I have visited the Freie University Berlin to look at the options of higher study. The University faculties are dispersed in a wide area and I had to look at the maps and walk for a long time to find the information counter. I have had other adventures in the meantime. Like trying different transport systems and getting back home without getting lost.

These three weeks were like a real holiday for me. No 9-5 work, no deadlines, no distress, no tensions. I could give more time to my kid. But holidays usually don't last long. I should be busy before I get bored.