one last blurb about the family

In hindsight, i should have just copied what I wrote my last night in Dhaka and posted it on here. It is a little more articulate and I think does a slightly better job of describing my feelings about it all:

It is presently 2 AM. I will be leaving Dhaka in 8 hours or so. I have spent 10 days here, much longer than planned. The reasons why are long and boring. Right now I cannot sleep. Why not? Various emotions.

Basically I've had one of the most remarkable experiences of my life. In a span of less than a week, a family has basically adopted me' well, as best as one can adopt an adult. The generosity and kindness they have shown me is out of this world.

You know how many meals I have paid for the past 5 days? Zero. You know how many cups of tea I've been offered and drunk? 50? Bus rides? Two. Pretty much all I have paid for is water, phone cards, and my hotel. The rest has been provided by people who make in 1 year what I make in about a month. The man who has been at the center of it all lives in a room with his 2 daughters and wife. 4 people in a room smaller than my room. Above them is his nephew (the computer genius) in a decent sized room and below them is his mother. Now that I think about it, my hotel room is probably slightly bigger than any of those rooms.

Anyway... The looks they all had was so wonderful. They always had big smiles and were so polite. Shit, I really cannot describe what it was like. Right now I am crying just thinking of my time with them all. They warmth they exuded was just so powerful. Even though only 2 of them speak decent English, I feel like they all would do whatever they could to help me if need be. If I were to pop up at anytime, they would just be all excited and whatnot. And why? Why are they so kind to me? That's the confusing part. Why do they like me so much? What makes them put all this effort into doing things for me? What about me brings out those facial expressions? All I did was follow around one of them because I had plenty of time on my hands and he spoke English. well ok, he also is quite bright and interesting to talk to, but still...

His younger daughter is so, so cute. I was so tempted to give her a big hug tonight. I wanted to just kidnap her and bring her home with me. I think she had a crush on me. 6 yr oldsgenerally dig me for some reason. Her older sister made a shirt to give to a future girlfriend. Lynn and Min are their names. Mother is Leena. Those are some of the easiest names to remember around here. The father is Shaffiullah.

Not sure if I wrote this in the previous entry, and blogger is super slow here, so too lazy to check if I did but my last night there, I met Shaffiullah's nephew, aka the computer genius.

The nephew goes to American Intl. University in the rich part of Dhaka. Takes him an hour or so to go from home to the university. He is a computer science major, so he needs to use his computer a lot. He has a desktop. Well on occasion, he would forget something on his computer back home. Obviously it was a big pain to go back home and get it. He thought, "if only I could access the info on my mobile phone." So what did he do? He invented a program to do it.

I asked him, "isn't there software already out there to do this type of thing?"
"Just windows. Mine also works for Linux, Apple, etc. It is universal."

So how does it work? I have no idea. All i know is I could see his computer screen on his mobile phone, and use the phone like a mouse. I could open up his media player on his computer and play songs on his phone. To say I was blown away would be an understatement.

That wasn't all. He developed a program where you can set up a webcam and get the images from the cam on your phone.

Not bad for a 22 yr old college student in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Oh, he was meeting with some Aussies earlier this week to discuss development of his software. A friend of mine has also strongly recommended he patent it abroad. I have passed along the info.