We got an early start since we needed to shop for several household items in the next few days, and we wanted to make the most out of the daylight hours.Our first stop was DIT II (Gulshan II Market), where we bought a fan for our kitchen (we didn’t want our poor aya to melt), an AC adaptor for my Linksys wireless router (somehow I checked every AC adaptor for 220 compatibility except for the one our network/Internet access depends on), and a couple of clocks to place around the house so that we can keep some semblance of punctuality. It was good to get out of the DIT II dungeon…er…market, since it was blistering hot inside.

[Editor's note: I'm redacting this and the next 30-ish days well after these events -- it's November 17 now -- so I may interject some observations that could not have been made without the benefit of time, and which I wouldn't have thought of back when I wrote down the notes for these posts. I didn't want to waste the notes, and I thought there were some cool things worth writing about, so you'll have to forgive me these posts are not as vivid in their recollection of the events.]

After making pit stops via CNG at the Standard Charter ATM (money! muhahahaha) and GIS (to drop off our passports and check our e-mail), we headed on over to Sally Ann, a business under the auspices of the Salvation Army. Sally Ann is involved in fair-trade business in Bangladesh, paying workers a good wage for their work and selling Bangladeshi products around the world. Their product line encompasses everything from hand-made paper to curtains, baskets, cards, and so on. Our friend Greg works at Sally Ann (which, I was later to find out, was a well-known nickname for the Salvation Army itself — obviously not well-known by moi) and we thought we’d drop in and ask him to have lunch with us. Instead, he kindly brought us to his humongous apartment and treated us to lunch instead.

Before coming to Bangladesh I was warned that I should not let too many people know that I knew anything about computers, or I’d end up having to go around from house to house fixing everyone’s machines! I’ve learned not to mind that too much, having been the official tech support for the entire Portela family for the past 15 years. Of course, when someone has just fed you a great lunch and mentions his computer isn’t connecting to the Internet, the least you can do is offer to assist them. A few waves of the magic wand (and deleting a couple of settings in Micro$oft Internet Exploder) and Greg’s laptop was accessing the Internet just fine. I got that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you’ve bested a computer which refuses to work, and ingratiated myself forever with the Chief Warkentin (a designation that might be controversial if Dawne lights upon this page).

On our CNG ride back home, it hit once again me just how different many things here seem, while others have astonishing parallels with my experiences in Brazil. For example, in Brazil it’s completely normal for taxi drivers to have crosses or rosaries hanging from their rear-view mirrors, or pictures of Jesus or Mary adorning their dashboards. Here in Bangladesh these charms are still there, albeit replaced by icons of Muslim significance. You can’t see it very well, but in the picture to the right, above the CNG driver’s head, hangs a postcard of the Ka’bah at Mecca, where all Muslims hope to be able to go on a hajj (pilgrimage) at least once in their lives. The hemisphers, languages, and cultures change, but people still have the desire to surround themselves with mementos of the things that give them comfort, or with reminders of the ideals to which they aspire.

In the evening we met the Snowdons at the BHAGA Club for a swim, heading over to their place for dinner later. After a wonderful meal of chili con carne they introduced us to “Settlers of Canaan” (admit it, you were wondering what the picture at the top of this post had to do with anything I’ve written so far). I’ve mentioned “Settlers of Catan” in my previous posts, the Canaan version is a Biblically-themed takeoff on Catan with several humorous elements. My recommendation would be to play Catan first and Canaan second, though the games can be enjoyable without ever having played the other. Apparently Settlers is a huge pastime for expats here in Bangladesh, so I doubt it’s the last time I’ll be mentioning it in my posts. I just had to mention it here because I won the game we played with the Snowdons, and such an accomplisment must, obviously, be immortalized for all time (because it may never happen again…).