Daylight savings confusion

This was the first year that Bangladesh tried out Daylight Savings Time.  There’s a huge problem with electricity shortages here, leading to what they call “load shedding” – rolling brown-outs or black-outs, where parts of the city are left without electricity for hours a day.  In the worst parts of the year (when supply is down and demand is highest) the electricity can be out for 12 hours a day, 3 or 4 days in a row.  (Disclaimer: our house enjoys the uncommon benefit of having a large generator, so we don’t suffer from these outages in the same way the majority of the city does.)

To try to save electricity this year, the government of Bangladesh decided to implement Daylight Savings Time for the first time ever.  To say the least, this was a bit of an adjustment.  On June 19th this year, the clocks moved one hour ahead – spring ahead, right?

Well, some people moved ahead.  Many other people continued to operate on “old time”.  For a few weeks, you had to specify “new time” (DST) or “old time” (not DST) whenever you made an appointment.

Tempting though it may be to assume, those guilty of sticking to “old time” were not just people in the village who don’t keep a regular schedule.  “Old time” holdouts included businessman, people who live in Dhaka and watch the news on TV and know that things were supposed to change.  It’s just that, well, they didn’t.

Gradually everybody got on the same page, and thankfully now there is no more “old time/new time”.  But now, of course, the time has come to “fall back” to old time – except that the government didn’t pass that part of the law.  Cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.  So now we’ve got this:

A power ministry high official said the government has decided not to revert to the old timing and instead re-arranged office and school timings.

“But there will still be some benefits after the evening. For instance, the shops will close at 8:00pm [which in GMT+6 is 7:00pm] and therefore ease pressure on demand onwards,” he said.

(Read the whole article on the time change in the Daily Star.)

What??  Could this possibly get any more confusing?  They’ve realized that they need to switch back to “old time,” because the sun keeps coming up later every day (odd), and people don’t want to go to work or school in the dark.  However, the solution is apparently NOT to switch back off of daylight savings time.  Instead of a nice, organized, national time change, the government has decided to keep the current time and will instead change the start and end times of all schools, businesses, and government offices so as to achieve the desired savings in electricity use.

Really?

Shomi at 7 months!

OK, so Shomi was 7 months old last week, but 7 months – 1 week doesn’t make for such a great title.

Shomi has hit 50 pounds and seems to be staying!  She used to grow at a couple pounds a week, but lately that has leveled off, so we’re thinking this is what we’re gonna get.  Shomi looks more and more like a “real dog” and less like the fuzzy puppy we used to have … she also gets into “real dog” trouble.  Lately she’s taken to eating the paint off the walls.  Who knew dogs did such things??

Um, the action shot is a tad fuzzy, but you get the idea that she’s moving really really fast:

Apparently I need to write more about Dhaka

I realize I haven’t written much about Dhaka lately.  That’s because, well, everything’s pretty much the same.

Anyways, some pictures from around town:

A pickup game of cricket, and goats in a rickshaw.

What’s new in Dhaka?  Nothing’s new.  Someone forgot to turn off the monsoon, so it’s still raining, even though technically the monsoon ended last month.  We’ve taken this as a good excuse to stay home and work our way through the boxed set of the West Wing I got for my birthday.

Anti-Rat Campaign!

Bangladesh awards farmer who killed 83,000 rats

By JULHAS ALAM (AP) – 1 day ago

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh on Wednesday awarded a farmer who killed more than 83,000 rats and launched a monthlong campaign nationwide to kill millions more, to protect crops and reduce the need for food imports.

Mokhairul Islam, 40, won a first prize of a color television for killing some 83,450 rats in the past nine months in Gazipur district near the South Asian country’s capital, Dhaka. He collected their tails for proof.

“I am so happy to get this honor,” Islam told The Associated Press after receiving a 14-inch television and a certificate amid cheers at an official ceremony packed with 500 farmers and officials. “I had no idea that the government gives prizes for this.”

“This is an exciting moment. I will continue to kill them,” he vowed.

Um, yuck.  As my mom pointed out, who had to count the tails??  But… it’s 83,000 less rats around here.  That is commendable.

Shomi takes a bath

China!

Over the Eid vacation we took a quick getaway to Beijing! And we loved it. Beijing really covered the whole spectrum of things to do, from really old, cool historical places to fun markets to top-notch international shopping. It’s a huge city! And seems to have everything on offer.

Coming from Bangladesh, as usual, things seemed organized and clean. Still, we were surprised and impressed with how easy it was to get around. The metro was well-signed in English, major landmarks had signs on the street and there were street maps everywhere. I suspect in large part this came about due to the Olympics, but we found it quite easy to get around. Spoken English on the other hand – not so much. We were told to get cards for places we wanted to go (i.e. our hotel) and show them to taxi drivers. This also worked for metro stops and other locations – we couldn’t communicate with the driver, but if we pointed to where we wanted to go on the map, or to the address written in Chinese in our guidebook, they could usually get us there. Most restaurants had picture menus with English as well, so we just pointed to what we want, and usually got the right thing. All in all, we got along, saw a ton of cool stuff, and generally had a great time.

An unsurprising observation: China is quite large. We were totally wiped out by all the walking we did! With so much to see and do, and a metro to conveniently get you there, we were on our feet most of the day. Conveniently enough, they also have Starbucks, which provided a good excuse to sit for a while.

and the Lama Temple.

At the Wall!

Despite what this picture might imply, English signage was abundant.

The Forbidden City.

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Also at the Forbidden City.

The Summer Palace

A main shopping district.

Traffic woes continue – call in the army

With traffic at its annual worst, the government called in the big guns – the military police, at least.

This month is Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast leading up to Eid, probably the most important religious holiday of the year.  I don’t profess to be any kind of expert on the religious part, but here’s what it means for traffic – everyone wants to get home early from work, so that they can be with their families to break the fast at sundown each night.  Many people go out for special events at restaurants, also right at sundown.  Sundown has been right around 7:10 – 7:15 lately, so from about 5:00 everyone is in a mad dash to get home.  Traffic, obviously, comes to a complete halt.

Also, Ramadan is a huge shopping month – everyone buys their relatives presents, often a new outfit or other special gift.  Think of it like the big shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the U.S. – there are huge sales, the malls are packed; the traffic is correspondingly awful.

So anyways, the government decided it was time to do something about the problem.  It called in the troops.  Per the BBC:

Dhaka is one of the fastest-growing, and slowest-moving cities in the world.

Its population has doubled in the past decade to reach about 15 million, but hardly any new roads have been built in all that time.

As a result the Bangladeshi capital has become immensely congested.

Military policemen took up positions on Tuesday morning at some of the major junctions to try to get things moving.

So far, it hasn’t done much good.  We just got a new GPS, which has a handy “trip calculator” feature.  Yesterday, on the way home from work, we averaged 1 (one) mile/hr.

The Mystery of the Missing Handicap

As has been mentioned before, M likes to golf.  A lot.  And fortunately, one of the nicer things in Dhaka are the two golf courses.  So when we arrived, 15 months ago, M inquired about getting his handicap recognized so that he could sign up to play in tournaments at the nicer of the two Clubs here.

Some explanation, for the non-golf inclined.  Your handicap is calculated with a formula to approximate how many strokes over par you should be able to play; you need one to play in amateur tournaments.  To have a handicap on record, you usually have to play  a certain number of rounds of golf at a club with a member, and have your score recorded.  But once you have a handicap, it’s supposed to be valid worldwide.

Back to Dhaka.  M asked about getting a handicap to play in the tournaments here in Dhaka.  The Club flat-out told M that they couldn’t recognize his handicap from Argentina.  Sorry; only handicaps from Bangladesh.  Why?  Because.  OK, so he’d need a Bangladeshi handicap.

This is where things got complicated.  First they told M he would need to turn in 10 completed scorecards for his handicap.  Later it became 20.  After all the scorecards were turned in, he was told that he also had to turn in an official letter requesting the calculation of his handicap, and that his scorecards had not been counted because he had not made an official request — despite the ongoing discussions with people at various levels about the ongoing process of determining his handicap.

So he turned in the letter and waited; he continued turning in scorecards.  This was maybe 3 or 4 months after we arrived.   Waited and waited some more.  Each time he inquired he was told it would be done “next time.”

This is a typical Bangladeshi answer that means “later,” or in this case, “never.”

As the months past we became more frustrated.  Tournament season has come around again and M still has no handicap on record, so he cannot sign up to play in tournaments.  This week we finally went to talk to the General Manager of the Club, after a long and heated discussion with the person in charge of the handicaps.

The General Manager told us that M could not, in fact, register his handicap with the Club at all, and that as a guest, M cannot sign up for any tournaments.  The Manager will be happy to issue M a “handicap certificate” — but as this score will not be in the Club’s registry or count for tournament entry, as far as we understand, it doesn’t actually serve any purpose.

The fact that the prior year’s General Manager promised M the exact opposite bears no weight in the discussion.

Why share this long tale of frustration?  Mostly, because I’m thankful that it is about something so trivial as a golf handicap.  While M would, indeed, like to sign up for golf tournaments here, there are certainly worse things that could befall us.  I can’t imagine what it must be like to face this kind of frustration and confusion when it relates to something like getting a water line or a telephone for your house; getting medical care; or applying for a job.  At every step in this process we have been told something different, been directly lied to, or been told “next time.”  It has been impossible to determine what the actual “rules” are, if such exist.   The golf club is run by retired military officers, and as such is actually one of the better-run institutions in the country.  Dealing with the same issues and frustrations in every aspect of your life would be, well, impossible.

Count your blessings, name them one by one.