From my apartment, I descend onto the side street I live on. It is a dirt road, often filled with puddles from yesterday's rainstorm. The guard salutes me. So many guards, because there are so many people, and they need some way to earn their living. There are so many, there seem to be guards for the guards. But this one, unlike most, actually has a uniform. Crisp and blue, police-like. Always smiling and kind.

Five story buildings loom overhead, in various states of dilapidation. One can actually hear birds chirping, and with the soft wet dirt underneath, it all lends itself to a florestral sensation, despite the lack of greenery. But this street is deceiving in its peacefulness- it is a dead-end road, so only residents come down it, many of whom pass the day in the street, just sitting and watching, as birds on a telephone line.

100 yards to go, and I'm on the main street, one of the principle arteries connecting Gulshan, the embassies, and Banani. I wish I didn't have to use it. Because as soon as the road changes from dirt to pot-holed concrete, the obstacle course begins.

Hundreds of people- street urchins, businessmen, old beggars, students, shopkeepers, street vendors, guards, police- crowd the sidewalk, the sidewalk that ends and begins abruptly and that, if I'm not careful, could easily lead me to step (or fall) into the open stormwater channels that stink of rot and feces. Some walk, some stop, some haggle for a handout, some crouch down to relieve themselves in the stormwater drains, adding to the trash and muck already filling them. As I weave around the people, sometimes passing into the road, I duck to avoid the tangle of telecom cables that droop over the sides of the street. Hundreds of them, one for each person on the street, it seems. Swarms of rickshaw drivers and beggars buzz around, each hoping for a bit of money.

Trees sprout miraculously out of the sidewalk, the paving having been done meticulously around them, the bricks laid right up against the tree trunk. The trees here must feel strangled, but the green is welcome in a city of neutered colors: grays and browns and tans.

I walk past a tea walla. A small crowd is gathered around the rusty cart, drinking tea and smoking, as the walla deftly and expertly mixes his elixir of sugar, condensed milk, and tea, all for ten cents. Plastic bags packed with cheap pastries hang from the roof of the stall or sit in plastic bins on the counter space, and crushed cigarettes and plastic wrappers litter the ground around the tea walla like a Persian carpet, attesting to his success.

I cross a road, immersing myself in the impossibly loud traffic, each vehicle honking in unison, rickshaws adding to the cacophony with their bicycle bells, motorcycles growling past menacingly. The cars, jockeying for position, ignore my presence until the last millisecond. It is a harrowing game of chicken that often leaves me leaping out of the way of an impatient driver.

Safely crossed to the other side, I continue down the side of the street, which feels more alive than dead. Indeed, when entering Dhaka, one has the impression of entering the belly of the whale. Nowhere else will you find every square foot of the street so efficiently used, and not just to get around. There are all the street vendors: the tea wallas, of course, and food stalls (or even bowls of food set on a stool): puffed rice, boiled eggs, fujka, spicy diced vegetables with egg, pastries of all sorts, and even cooks making biryani rice in the street; there are the cigarette stalls and the stands where you can recharge your phone, there are shoe shiners and garment sellers, the ubiquitous beggars, the people-watchers, the smokers, the under-employed (those whose job consists of sitting around all day long), the drivers waiting for their employer, the rickshaw drivers on break, the snappily-dressed office workers returning from lunch. It is an electron cloud, cracking with energy and moving too quickly and chaotically to pinpoint with any accuracy. 

Slightly out of breath with it all, I hurry to my destination, one more cell in the organism that is the street of Dhaka.

After my previous article on the ten craziest things that have happened to me so far in Bangladesh, I wanted to write a follow-on top ten list of the good things about Dhaka. I did have to think outside the box quite a bit to come up with ten, but here they are:

1. The street food in all its varieties. Costing anywhere from ten to fifty cents, it's both tasty and affordable. As long as you're not too squeamish about hygiene, that is. A big favorite here, especially among Bangladeshi girls, is a treat called Fujka. It's hard to describe it, but imagine a sweet and spicy filling inside a fried, tortilla chip like crust. I personally really like to get a snack (I don't know what it's called) made of an egg mashed up with onions, garlic, chilis, and other vegetables. They wrap it in an old flyer and give you a business card cut in half to use as a spoon. And while there are Western-style cafes where you can buy coffee for $3 a pop, the original Bangladeshi "cafes" are small roadside tea stalls. The tea costs six taka (about ten cents). There you can see Bangladeshis congregating, milling about, chatting, and relaxing.
2. Most people here are very kind. I've almost never had a problem stopping people to ask for help or for directions, and many times bystanders have helped me out spontaneously by translating when I was struggling to communicate with someone who didn't speak much English. People here can be so nice that I've literally been spoonfed by a complete stranger! And of course, there are the small acts of kindness, like when a restaurant worker gave me a free bottle of water when I was dehydrated after a workout, or when the tea stall workers take out a stool for you to sit on.
3. People here tend to be very optimistic, which I think is a good thing. They know their country has many problems, but they also recognize that those problems afford many opportunities, as well. Many times in conversation Bangladeshis have affirmed that now is the time to be in Bangladesh, when it is really starting to grow and take off. And they are always thinking about ways to take advantage of that opportunity to improve their situation! A staple conversation piece, at least with middle-class Bangladeshis, is about their plans to launch some kind of business or venture and made oodles of money. So far I've had Bangladeshis pitch me ideas like a paintball field, fish exporting, a garments industry middleman business, and a visa arranging service for Bangladeshis wanting to travel in the Americas.
4. Necessities are very inexpensive. At a street restaurants you can get a big lunch for anywhere from $1 to $3, and bottled water costs maybe 25 cents. Clothing is dirt cheap as well, mainly because Bangladesh makes so much of the world's garments. The factories routinely produce overruns or stock that doesn't quite meet the quality control standards of their clients. Usually, they are obligated by contract to destroy these, but most find their way into stalls on the street where you can buy them on the cheap. Good shirts can be had for less than $5, and pants rarely cost more than $10. Oh, and if you're a cell phone addict, the rates here are very affordable. I loaded my phone with $2.5 of credit about 3 weeks ago and I still have almost a dollar in credit left.
5. Dhaka pushes the expatriates together. I've met a few really cool people here from all over the world: New Zealand, Italy, Morocco, Hong Kong, etc. And perhaps because it can be so hard to meet new people in a small expat community in a place like Dhaka, you wind up getting to know your friends much better than you probably would at home. As an aside, one New Zealand woman I met works in one of the expat clubs as a hair stylist. She offered to cut my hair for free because she hated my haircut so much. She said it was worth it just so she wouldn't have to see it all the time!  This was right after I'd had my hair cut for $2 by a Bangladeshi barber who didn't understand my instructions very well, so I blame it on him. Teasing aside though, she did it free of charge because we'd become friends. I doubt I could have struck up a friendship with someone like her anywhere else but in Dhaka!
6. Western environmentalists could learn a thing or two about recycling from Bangladeshis. While Dhaka in particular has a major pollution problem, Bangladeshis are kings of recycling. Nothing here gets thrown away, but is rather passed around until it is falling apart. Then it is fixed until and used again and fixed until it is beyond repair, when it is dismembered and the pieces get reused to repair other second hand (or third, or fourth, or fifth) hand items. For example, I was chided by a colleague for throwing away an old hair trimmer that had stopped working. I had bought it for maybe $15 in Europe, and to me it was a cheap enough device that when it stopped working, I threw it away. My colleague rescued it and promptly tried selling it second-hand. This applies for anything: cars, fridges, air conditioners. Heck, the buses here get so much life squeezed out of them that they seem to be more rust than metal.
7. You can get away with a lot. In the US, we say death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. Unless you're in Bangladesh- then the only certainty is death. Seriously, it seems like there's very little that can't be accomplished with a bit of money to grease the grooves of the machine. Don't want to wait in line, or want to get an application fast-tracked? Cough up a little bit of money and the wait disappears. This corruption in general isn't a good thing, and I debated about including it in this list, but the option is there if you're willing to take advantage of it. Foreigners in particular seem to get a bit of a free pass. Again, not a good thing in general, but the discrimination definitely exists, and in this case, it can work in your favor. For example, when I flew into Dhaka I was the only foreigner on the flight. While everyone had to stand in line to get their bags checked, I was waved through security without so much as passing my bags through an x-ray machine.
8. While Dhaka is a huge city of many millions in a country of 160 million, it is easy to meet "important" people and move up the social ladder quickly. In the short time I've been here, I've been introduced (albeit briefly) to top level government ministers and some pretty successful business people in the country. Ultimately I think it's because the upper class and upper-middle class are such a small group, you've got to rub elbows with important people at some point just because everybody knows everyone else. This rule extends to other fields, too. For example, a musician I met here mentioned that because of how small and nascent the music scene is in Dhaka, it's easy to get gigs even as a mediocre musician.
9. The idea of exploring Bangladesh outside of Dhaka! In general, Dhaka is a difficult city to live in as a foreigner: it's noisy, polluted, hard to get around, and decently expensive. But I've routinely heard Bangladeshis say that Dhaka is the worst part of Bangladesh. That makes me eager and hopeful to explore the countryside, something I haven't yet been able to do because of the nature of my work here. But in the next month I'll have the opportunity to verify the veracity of this claim. Until then, it's comforting to think that Dhaka is not representative of Bangladesh as a whole.
10. If you can carve out a good life in Dhaka, then you can live a good life anywhere! Like #9, this one is a bit of a cop-out, because in a way I'm more making a statement about how Dhaka is such a difficult place to live in as a foreigner. Indeed, there's no sense pretending like it is a great city. But that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying my time here, or learning a lot. And that's exactly what I mean with this point. Yes, Dhaka is a difficult place to live in. But in spite of that, a good, enjoyable life can be made here. The city and its people have a lot to teach. At least, I am learning a lot about myself and the world. To me, these are empowering thoughts. If I can carve out a niche for myself and lead a fulfilling life in Dhaka, then I can probably do the same and make the most of my life anywhere else in the world. I suppose what I'm saying is that a good life (however you want to define that!) is location-agnostic.

Shesh- finished!

After a half-year long hiatus from posting on this blog, I'm back at it! Though, to be fair, I have been writing- and editing- a lot, just on a new project. Hopefully I will be able to share it soon.

Since I last wrote a blog post, a lot's happened. Chiefly, I moved to Bangladesh for a 2-year long position with an economic development company. The job didn't work out, but it did give me quite a few memorable experiences. Here are ten of the crazier things that have happened so far!

If the list seems slanted towards the bad things, it's only because I wanted to share the crazy anecdotes and hard-to-believe occurrences that come with living in a new place and culture, before everything becomes normal and mundane. 

1. Getting my smartphone stolen on my third day in Bangladesh. I was at a posh event at a swanky convention center, and I left my bag at our table with my colleagues for about five minutes. Unfortunately the lady sitting next to me (opposite my new colleagues) turned out to be a famous thief. We saw a post on Facebook a few days after she stole my phone. The post claimed she'd been doing this for years and had stolen quite a bit. I suppose I was lucky I didn't lose my wallet, too! The worst thing about losing my phone is that it was what I used to take pictures. So apologies if this post is lacking in imagery- now you know why!
2. Eating in street restaurants. And by street restaurants, I mean makeshift eateries set up in a muddy patch of land 10 feet from the dust and grime of a busy road, with a tarp for a roof and plastic tables and chairs covered in swarming flies. Giant vats of dahl, curry, biryani, and more simmer on gas stoves right in front of you. Once you sit down, the cloud of flies parts momentarily and the servers bring you plates of rice, curry, fish, eggs, vegetables, and more. You wash your hands right at your chair, with a jug of water they provide, and you'd better wash your hands, because you'll be eating with your right hand like an authentic Bangladeshi. You mix up your curry and rice into little balls with your fingers and then use your thumb like a lever to shovel it into your mouth.
   It's fun once you get the hang of it- it makes me feel like a little kid again.
3. Sharing food with Bangladeshis. One night, when I went to the street restaurant I almost always went to for dinner, I was invited to sit down at the same table as a stony-faced youth. As soon as I sat down, he offered me some of his chicken and rice. Being vegetarian, I declined. He insisted, so I gingerly picked up some of the rice with my right hand and ate it. "Please, have some more." I declined, as I had my own food on the way. I began chowing down on my dahl as soon as it arrived, and was promptly chided by my new friend for eating too fast.
4. That was nothing, though, compared to the very friendly guy on the street who spoon fed me puffed rice. In most places on the street there are tiny stalls where you can buy different treats for anywhere from 10 to 30 Taka (10 to 40 cents, more or less). Sometimes the sellers don't even have a stall, they just carry around the ingredients in a big bowl they carry on their head. Anyway, I stopped in front of a guy selling puffed rice mixed with lime, chili, and veggies. He would mix it all together, then put it into a little cup made of an old flyer stapled into a cone shape. To top it off, he stuck a business card, cut in half, into the top of it. That's your spoon.
   Anyway, someone who had just bought the puffed rice treat saw me eying the food. He offered me his paper cup full of food for me to try. Not wanting to offend, I scooped a bit off with the included business card spoon and handed it back. "Tasty!" I said. "Thanks!" "No, no. You didn't get enough!" And before I could even think about it, he'd scooped up some more. My jaw dropped- is he really going to spoon feed me? He deftly deposited the business card full of puffed rice into my newly opened mouth. All that was missing was the airplane sound effect.
5. Narrowly dodging motorcycle-riding thieves. One night I was going to the gym in a rickshaw. It's night out, and though we're on one of the main roads connecting Gulshan 2 to Gulshan 1, there isn't much traffic. I'm already in a bad mood from a bad day at work, so I have my head buried in my kindle to distract myself before my workout.
   I hear a motorcycle hit the accelerator beside me and as I look up, I see bike with passenger come veering at my rickshaw from my right side. I'm staring right into the greedy eyes of the passenger, rapidly approaching, with his arms spread wide to grab my kindle. Instinctively, I pull my body back, and I feel his fingers barely touch my e-reader before slipping off.
   The motorcycle speeds away like a coon chased by hounds, and all I can think to do is stand up in the rickshaw, triumphant, and shout obscenities at the would be thieves.
   Right after that, my rickshaw got hit by a car. Lovely night. (That was actually the second time a rickshaw I'd been riding in had been hit by a car).
6. Public Nudity. One day me and a colleague were coming back from Dhanmondi to our office in Gulshan 2. Now, without traffic, it's perhaps a thirty minute drive. Traffic was bad that day, so it was more like an hour and a half. To make matters worse, I was riding on the back of my colleagues motorcycle as a passenger. We were stopped in traffic for what seemed like ages, sweating terribly. An old man wandered by wearing nothing but a lunghi, or man-skirt. He stopped right next to me and my friend on our motorcycle, a blank expression on his face and his eyes vacant. Without warning, he dropped his man-skirt and stoodnaked in front of rush hour traffic. After about five minutes of airing out his private bits, he refastened his man-skirt and continued on his way.
7. Speaking of motorcycles, I've ridden three to a motorcycle now several times. That can be rather harrowing, especially given how small Bangladeshi motorcycles are! No big choppers here, only tiny 150cc bikes.
8. Having first hand experience with corruption. I had to come to Bangladesh on a thirty day arrival visa. Since I would be working in the country for potentially up to two years, I needed to get it extended. Part of that process involves a police interview to make sure that you are actually here to do what you say you're here to do- in my case, to do business. My colleagues, who were working with me through every step of this process, filled me in on how it works.
   The cop will come for the interview at your home, they told me. You'll offer him some tea, but he'll decline. "I'm hungry, I'm not thirsty. I'm hungry, bhai (brother)". You then take out half your bribe (500 Taka or about $6 in our case) and stick it in his shirt pocket, patting his shoulder and saying "here you go". He'll then say, "no, I'm still hungry." At which point you'd take out the other 500 Taka and hope he still wasn't hungry after that.
   Ultimately, we wound up having to go to the police station for the interview. The cop was initially very hostile and kept asking me the same question, "what are you doing here?" We kept giving the same answer- I'm here to explore partnership options with local startups- but it was obvious he wanted to cause problems. Until my colleague took him aside and stuck a couple 500 Taka notes in his shirt pocket. Then he was all smiles.
9. Being asked to falsify data for a report to a major NGO. I don't want to get into too many details on this one. I will say it was in a professional setting, and I was very taken aback. I replied that I wasn't going to falsify data of any kind. The person who proposed this then corrected himself- he would falsify the data for me, I would just have to put it in the report. Um, no thanks.
10. The many money-making schemes of my friends here. One thing about many Bangladeshis is that they're always dreaming about how to make more money. For example, my current roommate has ten different schemes he wants me to get involved in. The one that seemed the most promising?
    Writing invitation letters for Bangladeshis seeking American visas. Apparently you can charge 3,000 USD, if not more to help someone get an American visa. And Latin American visas are quite popular too.

I hope you enjoyed the list! I am having quite an interesting time here in Bangladesh- there are things both good and bad. More coming soon!