Blogger Bec I apologise for the lack of photos which would no doubt give a much better idea of what I have just seen than my words but as it was my first visit, I didn't know the cultural norms and felt it would be insensitive to photograph until I understood the area better. In order to best understand how I can be of best use to the less fortunate in Dhaka, I needed to see first hand what the situation was like for the poorest of the poor. I have it in my head that I want o set [View Full Entry]

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Blogger Dougo For those of you who haven't packed up your entire life and left your home country, this is a big deal. Imagine arriving in a foreign place, moving into a new apartment, beginning a new job and socialising with your new colleagues with the contents of just one suitcase. Airlines out of Oz are very strict nowadays about how much you are able to actually check in and carry on. 20kg checked, 7 kg carried. Now imagine you arrive to work with nothing except some soft copies of resources on a laptop. No books. Nothing physical that you [View Full Entry]

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Blogger Bec Good news here in Dhaka, our government imposed curfew has been lifted during daylight hours. The trade off is that during these times, the internet and telephone lines are disconnected. (yet, we are still using the net now and it's 9:10 in the morning.) Yesterday was a bit hairy. We got up at the usual 5:45am ready to catch our 6:40am bus from the front of the apartment block. We waited and waited but still no school van turned up. Anxiously looking between my watch and my not-working mobile phone, Paula's voice ringing in my head - "nothing [View Full Entry]

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Blogger Bec Well, our very first government sanctioned curfew! We were all sent home at 4:15pm today as the government has issued a curfew for all Dhaka residents in effect at 6pm. As the uni students are revolting again, and there has been some quite serious clashes on campus, plus a little spilling out onto the streets, the interim (military) government is taking all precautions. No one is allowed out of their house until further notice (most likely later tonight or very early tomorrow morning). I doubt we'll miss work tomorrow. Ah, life, strange. Everything is ver [View Full Entry]

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Blogger Dougo Right. So, here I am sitting in the living room of our apartment in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The power has gone off as it has at about 7pm every day since our arrival. Every few minutes the lights will surge as the backup generator kicks in and sends power to our apartment. The Uninterrupted Power Supply or UPS as we have quickly learned, is pretty good. We can still turn on the fans above me and our room, as well as a lights in all rooms but the kitchen. No TV and no refrigerator though. The latter could pose [View Full Entry]

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Blogger Dougo Today we got our first good look at our new school, the International School of Dhaka. We were picked up from our apartment at around 8:30am and picked up other new staff on the route to school. The rivers are still swollen and so the driver had to go an alternate route to bypass the flooded roads. The school is an oasis. It really is. The pictures below show just how great the insides are. We will add pictures of the outside later. Today was a lot of house keeping: a tour of the school, mobile phone sim [View Full Entry]

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Blogger Bec reporting in from Matamanoa Island Resort A marine sanctuary one metre off shore, cocktails, an infinity pool, a massive bure, an un-get-outtable hammock, 4 chick lit novels, the pleasure of being alone and a whole lotta rain meant that our wonderful honeymoon was just not long enough! Our one island, one resort was about a 90 minute catamaran ride off the mainland of Fiji, or 30 nautical miles. We chose the island as there was no kids and was limited to 60 guests. The surroundings and the room was even better than we imagined! The resort offered heaps of [View Full Entry]

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Blogger Wifelet For some reason, the wedding blog got deleted when the website crashed. It now appears that the pictures that accompanied that specific blog are attached to another, completely different blog - grrr. I've tried deleting them but to no avail - when I log in to the Control Panel, the wedding pics are in none of our blogs, but when you, our brave and intrepid readers log in, you see the wedding pics on one of the ISD blogs! Grrr, grrr, double grrr. So, here I will try again to add the wedding pics in the correct place! [View Full Entry]

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Blogger Bec Quick Noah, get building! This month has seen it all in our home state of Victoria. First, we have had the state's worst rail disaster when a truck sped through a level crossing and smashed into a V/Line train, killing 11 people. The, last week we had a horrendous inner city shooting resulting in a death of a man whose only crime was to care about a woman who was being harrased. Now, the entire Gippsland area (where Doug's parents live, and where we have been staying for 7 weeks) is suffering under a deluge of rain, wind [View Full Entry]

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Local happenings Australasia » Australia » Victoria » Gippsland By Doug and Bec June 13th 2007 Doug Taylor and Bec Fidler A few pics of what we have been up to recently! We're really on the countdown now! We just wake everyday and pr [View Full Entry]

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