UP | uncultured project

A few days ago, Dhaka was hit by an earthquake. Now, just a few moments ago, Los Angeles is hit with a similar (on the Richter scale) earthquake. Small world? Weird coincidence? Or bad omen?

Here’s a checklist things I’ve had to (or haven’t yet) had to endure during this project:

Yes – I actually felt it. It actually startled me even though it wasn’t anything too serious. It felt like someone was behind me shaking the chair – every part of my body was shaking. Then it stopped.

I actually had a gut feeling/worry as to what it was – so I quickly jotted it down in (of all places) on Twitter so I had the moment logged (how’s that for the importance of twitter?). A few hours later I checked the local headlines to confirm. Unfortunately, I was right.

According to The Daily Star (and confirmed by me in real-time via Twitter) a tremor (measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale) hit Dhaka City just a few minutes shy of 1 am. According to The Daily Star, this quake was felt in places such as Sylhet, Moulvibazar, Sunamganj, Netrakona, Kishoreganj, Mymensingh, Gazipur, Jessore, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Bogra. Oh – and from my bedroom as well.

Update: AFP now has a story about this as well.

Update 2: Voice of America also has a story now and is reporting this tremor was felt in at least 17 districts.

Dr. Kathy Ward (University of Southern Illinois – Carbondale) on the roof of the Nari Jibon Project along with those involved with (and helped by) the project.

In this blog, I often mention Dr. Jeffrey Sachs. He was the inspiration that led me to start this project. But, as fate would have it, there has also been another brilliant American professor whose been an inspiration to me since I first heard of her. Her name is Dr. Kathy Ward and she’s a sociology professor at the University of Southern Illinois in Carbondale. I don’t talk about her often enough because… well… a grad student praising one of their favorite professors is just cliché now isn’t it?

But the fact of the matter is that there is a lot to laud about the work Dr. Ward has done here in Bangladesh through her non-profit called the Nari Jibon Project. And while more PR-savvy people in Dhaka seem to be able to market themselves as “the unsung hero of Dhaka” – I got a chance to meet the real McCoy.

All that and more after the jump.

Continue reading ‘What Would Kathy Do?’

This project is not over. Especially with all these donations that have poured in, I definitely plan to continue at least until the majority of these donations have been properly spent. Even though a lot of people have made donations specifically for my personal expenses, I’m not comfortable – and would like to avoid – spending such funds on the problem of the broken harddrive.

Basically, over the next few days, I’m going to have to figure out what I will do next. Do I try and fly home and have this harddrive fixed under warranty? Do I invest in a new hard drive and have a friend (or friendly expat) bring it into Bangladesh for me? Or do I try and fix it locally – if that’s at all possible – and risk voiding the warranty?

I always knew something would break down sooner or later. But the likely culprits always seemed to be my MacBook or my camcorder – which I usually take with me everywhere I go. I never imagined that my two-month old LaCIe (brought in from the States with a lot of luck) would die so quickly.

In the meantime, there are still a few things planned. Even if I do have to fly back home to sort this stuff out, I hope to have at least one (very important) episode up before I have to fly back home.

I plugged in my external harddrive (the harddrive which stores much of the raw footage accumulated during this project and all the episodes compiled for YouTube) and flipped the switch. Nothing happened. I check the cords, make sure everything is plugged in – nada.

The worst case scenario is now here: something has broken which is critical to the continuation of this project.

I’m a big believer in Murphy’s Law – so I was kind of expected something like this to happen. I’m kind of annoyed that it is this particular harddrive that failed – because I really went out of my way to try and get my hands on a LaCie harddrive here in Bangladesh. I ordered it from Amazon.com and sent it to a professor in the States who happened to be flying to Bangladesh.

It only lasted a month – whereas the Western Digital Harddrives I’ve been using for a good part of a year are chugging along just fine.

There aren’t many options available. This HD is a big investment and I’d like to have it repaired under warranty – and maybe have a way of retrieving the data that was on it. But the nearest location that will repair it under warranty is in Singapore. At the cost of flying to Singapore, I could just as easily fly home. I’d buy a replacement harddrive, but part of the reason I’ve gone to such lengths to get harddrives is because decent harddrive enclosures are hard to obtain in Bangladesh.

I’ll keep you guys posted. It is starting to look like I may need to fly back home – even if only temporary.

When I first heard of Twitter, I couldn’t ever imagine myself using it. I already have a blog, so why do I need to go beyond that by posting short messages about what I’m doing at every little moment?

I tended to agree with people who suggested that Twitter is nothing more than “inane twaddle” and more akin to a “glorified messenger service”. But that was before Matt started integrating Twitter into this project.

As Matt explained to me, the internet connection in Uganda is worse than Bangladesh. So, not only is video blogging out of the question, but also even regular blogging is sometimes hard. Each photo he uploads to this site, he told me, takes about half an hour.

That’s how he got involved with Twitter. Thanks to Twitter, I’ve been able to keep track of the ups and downs of his micro-finance project to help over 180 Ugandan grandmothers earn an income. When you guys stepped in by offering to help finance his work, we were able to see how he did things every step of the way – practically in real-time.

After being inspired by Matt, I started to use Twitter myself. Sure, sometimes I do talk about inane things, like the new Star Trek movie posters that came out or the difficulties in making a background layout for the YouTube channel. But, I’ve also been able to share important experiences I wouldn’t have blogged about.

As those following me on Twitter know, I recently came back from a trip outside of Dhaka City that involved an overnight boat ride. Although such boats can be safe, there are also a lot of risks. One of the colleagues I went with, in fact, had lost her cellphone after being robbed at the docks.

If it wasn’t for Twitter, I would never have talked about the warning I got from someone reminding me the importance of locking my cabin door and then – after docking – how I had to stay inside the cabin for three extra hours while we waited for the robbers and thugs along the docks to lose interest.

After Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, I was one of the few (or perhaps the only person) live-blogging during disaster relief work. Most of the personnel in the field (from various NGOs and charities) simply didn’t have time to do much more than send a quick email or SMS a friend. I could very easily see the importance of Twitter in providing quick, accessible, and important information in a situation like that.

The way I see it, Twitter has a lot of potential – maybe even more than blogs itself. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be “inane” stuff on there. For me, my biggest limitation to untapping that potential with Twitter is the equipment I have. I usually have to pull out my MacBook, boot it up, and then use Twitter. The keypad on my old Motorola cellphone isn’t very Twitter-friendly.

With this project, I’m trying my best to make important issues (like global poverty) accessible to a global audience by using blogs and video blogs in a way that no one has before. I can very easily see Twitter adding another dimension to making this issue accessible to others. And all it would take is an iPhone (or other smartphone) and use of the ubiquituous cellular (but slow) internet that is cropping up here in the developing world.