Firstly, it's happened, I've worked out, with a little bit of help, how to upload photographs. This one was taken by a Czech friend on one of our walkabouts and captures something of the nightlife in the area of Elephant Road.
I keep referring to van Schelden but his book is really very good. He never resiles from criticisms and lists the problems quite clearly - corruption, aid dependency, greed of the middle classes, incompetence of the bureaucrats and so o - but he manages to remain optimistic and is clearly very fond of both Bangladesh and its people. He says quite unequivocally that Bangladesh is not a failed state. In fact it has transformed itself since 1971 - it's just hard to know how much when you're on the streets of Dhaka in the heat.
Yesterday I has a small reunion with the first batches of students I taught at ULAB in 2006. They have graduated and gone on to great things. It was a great pleasure to meet and talk with them.
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