2017 Review

As the year is coming to an end, and I am going through the images and videos of the year, even though I feel like I didn’t do much, the images show me we had lot of activities and places visited.

The year started lavishly with our stay at the 5 star Westin and most romantically as Raj and I performed two songs on the stage at my university program on my birthday (nobody in the audience had any clue about the special day).  Talking about performance, Parisa performed the ‘Indian Song’ at her piano school on 12^th February. That was a really exciting day for her and she looked very pretty in her long black skirt, white full-sleeved shirt with a bow, black shoes and braids!

Her Performance Day

Her Performance

Tomtom also explored her creativity in writing poems. We composed one early this year:

There was an angry girl

When angry, things she’d hurl,

She would be cross with people

And turn all purple.

Her Mummum was calm,

She liked to eat plum,

She would soothe her daughter,

They would be full of laughter.

She had a quiet papa

Who was good at making chapa.

He would call her the best

They would face all the test.

She wrote this beautiful poem titled ‘The Moon’:

I’m very bright

I shine my light,

At night,

I see you all.

But when the morning comes,

I go to sleep

And again when it is night,

I wake up.

I see little houses

And you walking around,

I see you go to sleep

And I see all your dreams.   

January was hectic with lot of official programs - there was a symposium on 18^th January on Teaching English Pronunciation, the usual SA TV anniversary on 19^th January, on 28^th January DIU had its Foundation Day Ceremony and the US Ambassador mentioned me in her speech and afterwards we took a selfie. There was such an adrenaline rush that day! We went on a family trip to Dinajpur in the cold weather to attend Saniyat’s Dada’s majban. 

In Front of Kantajeu Temple

It was a fulfilling experience for me visiting the place after 13 years. I received family warmth and bonding, didn’t feel like an outsider at all. We had a family day out at Angana Resort on 5^th February with Raj’s family – a day full of games, physical activities, chatting . . . Boro Khalamoni joined us even though she didn’t feel 100% and she told me to include her next time. Now we are planning another family picnic and her words keep ringing in my ears. She is missed. Her death has created a big hole in Raj’s family. 

Eid-ul-Fitr Pic with Khalamoni

Peyara Chacha came to Bangladesh with his new wife and gave us a treat which was a great family gathering because Boro Bhabi also joined and it was great to see her after ages. With all these Tomtom’s socializing skills were in practice and it’s amazing to see how she greets people, chats on her own . . . some of the things are even picked up or learnt by herself!

In Laws

She was super exited to have her ears pierced which was done on 25^th January, but it did not end well for her. We had to take her to the doctor when her ear infection would not subside. To our surprise the doctor informed us that she has gold allergy, and she cannot wear gold for the time being. In addition, due to some problems one of her teeth did not come out and she had a gum incision which freaked both of us out.

My Brave Little Girl

Tomtom also took part in the Summer Club program like previous years. She likes to spend one week in Summer Club so much and waits eagerly every year. But this year she became sick at the end of the program because of a terrible pain in her ear and we had to rush to the doctor to discover that she had ear infection. She and her friends worked on a science project ‘Solar System’ in September, decorated the classroom, she gave a speech, and the judges questioned them – an altogether new experience of showcasing a project. 

Summer Club Closing Ceremony

She had occasional visits to the Fantasy Island, went to Rajendrapur Eco Resort on 29^th July. I had a little accident there and she was all teary seeing me in pain. Later she said she could feel my pain because she remembered her pain when she tumbled on the staircase. Examples of empathy were becoming evident more and more. She finished class 1 with flying colors coming second in the class and receiving a silver medal. House parties have become a regular event at the end of term exams – she had one on 27^th May and another on 21^st December. All the kids at the house shouting, shrieking, playing, running might be bit of too much but I love to see her enjoying her time with friends and learning social/ interpersonal/ communication skills. Seheri with ex students’ bunch has also become regular as we had this again this year. We had a great family time at Nandan Park on September 15. Tomtom had UN Day celebration on 24^th October at school. Words with Friends became a family game and Raj kept posting how miserably he kept losing against me. Birthday this year was with friends and family and I surprised her with a collage with short written notes from people who love her.

Family

Elsa Birthday Cake

This is the first time I was away during Qurbani Eid to participate and work in Heart for Humanity event of the university. We went to Dinajpur and helped flood-victims in post flood rehabilitation process. This experience was a rewarding one for two reasons. Seeing people’s lives up close was enlightening; they can smile even having so little and fight back with dignity. Moreover, I met a wonderful bunch of students and bonded with them. Life is like that, you meet new people, have new experiences and all these give you the right boost to move on in life. Not to forget the old ones of course because when I came back on 4^th September Parisa had many surprises for me. In these few days both of us missed each other a lot and I was terribly down the night before Eid thinking about her, missing her. She was cross with her friend on Eid day and I tried to cheer her up by making all my students wish her on the phone but that didn’t help much.  

Flood Affected Dinajpur

I got into poetry much and started discovering Charles Bukowski, he also helped me survive some bad times. Can’t get enough of “An Almost Made Up Poem”. Beautiful! La La Land took over me and I kept singing ‘fools who dream’. Lol. Made a little video too. We also had two home productions – The Fool by Lee Ann Womack and Ekhon to shomoy bhalobashar. Had many outings with school friends – one on 11^th March in old town, Ahsan Manjil, Hotel Al Razzak, Lal Bag Fort was a great one. 

In Front of Ahsan Manjil

I also had visitors from abroad – Zia Bhai from USA, ex students Tajia came from Malaysia and we had a lovely afternoon, Samira came from London and we had lot of catching up, cousins Niloy and Nishu arrived from Australia, meho Chachi from Perth. Had two great events with students – we went out to watch plays at Shilpakala Academy (one of them being a Norwegian play) and they prepared skits on Shakespearean plays placing them in modern contexts. Some of their performances surpassed my expectation. I went to India twice this year – once on an official tour to KIIT and KISS with 22 other delegates of Daffodil International University in October, another time with Humaira in late November for her treatment purpose.

DIU Delegation at KIIT

I started anchoring a talk show titled 'SA TV Shonglap' and continued for 3 months and then stopped doing it because it was time-consuming and financially not at all rewarding. But I learnt a lot during the sessions sitting with and listening to experts from almost all fields, met some great people too. 

With Ex Bangladesh Bank Governor (Abbu's ex Colleague)

Academically, I didn’t improve much, just completed a 5-week long course on “Art of Everyday Classroom Assessment” conducted by the University of Oregon. 

Certificate Awarding Ceremony

The desired promotion happened but it wasn’t such a joyful news. Last December’s wound kept hurting. I just can’t persist something that I know I want. It’s true that the stone didn’t move and the moss grew thicker. The 8 sessions with colleagues to develop inter-intra personal skills were eye-opening but I still lag behind and lose the thrust. For example, I stopped exercising in March, took it up again in November but for more than a week not been doing it even being aware of the 7 extra kg. It seems regularity and persistence is something that is not at all in me. Parisa, on the other hand, is very persistence. Her love for gaming, and seeing till the end with both gaming and studies show it. She has become more compassionate and notices if other people are in trouble. Words like, "tomar koshto hocche na to?" show me glimpse of compassion. I hope she will hang onto it.

At the advent of the new year, I’ll have to mouth my earlier wish to open new possibilities.

Stress & Stress Management

Personal Skill Development: Stress & Stress Management 

Introduction

This post is written in response to a self-exploratory course that I am undertaking now with my Daffodil University colleagues. In lesson 7 we are asked to go through this site: https://www.skillsyouneed.com/personal-skills.html and choose a skill that I want to develop myself. 

I want to see myself effectively coping with stress, managing stress and finding ways to reduce unnecessary or unhealthy levels of stress. This is the one personal skill that I would like to develop. 

My stress is mostly personal stress which is caused by the nature of my work, plans of changes in my life or personal problems, and leads to anxiety, tension, insomnia and tiredness.

Plan

Therefore, I have prepared this plan to develop this skill in myself.

1. Learn to recognize when I'm stressed: Sometimes when I am stressed, I don't know what is causing it. Even when I try to relax, I have the thoughts of unfinished work in my mind which hinders me to truly relax. Thus identifying if it's work or any personal issue bothering me, is the first step.

2. Learn to relax: I already knew about breathing exercises or focusing on breathing. But after studying the site I came to know about 'progressive relaxation' which is tightening each part of the body's muscles and relaxing them. I used both yesterday and found them very effective.

3. Time management: I have real issues with time management. I tend to procrastinate and leave the more prioritized work out until the deadline. If it is something related to me and there is no official deadline, I tend to avoid it. These three things can be done to maximize the use of my time:

a. Have a priority matrix to organize tasks into appropriate categories.

b. Stop multi-tasking.

c. Minimize distraction.

4. Reduce the demands on yourself: I have to say NO when I am sure that taking up another task will only burden me more.

5. Work-life balance: I strongly feel that I have the least work-life balance now. For this the following has to be done:

a. Keep a diary for a week, and set out how much time I spend on each activity, both at work and outside.

b. Do strategic thinking about where I am and where I want to be.

c. Bring changes to get from ‘now’ to ‘future’.

Mindmap for Stress Management

Goal

I will start keeping the diary for assessing my work-life scenario at present from 22nd November to 28th November 2017. This will help me realize how I am spending my time both at work and at home. Based on this I will calculate where I am now and where I wan to be during the weekend 30th and 31st December 2017. According to that I will decide on the changes that I want to bring in my life.  

Steps to Monitor my Progress

1. I will prepare a priority matrix and keep a track of my tasks and regularly update it.

2. I will be regular in exercising and relaxing.

3. I will reduce the amount of office work (like checking scripts and class preparation) at home, and ask my family members to remind me so when I do it.

I am determined to bring positive changes in my life so that I can work with my full potential and improve for better.

2016 at a Glimpse

2016 was a deciding year for me. The year gave me new insight into my surrounding, into myself and overall into life and its purpose. If we don’t transform ourselves in the journey of life, we get stuck into a stagnant pool of mundane existence. As I transform myself, life never stops surprising me! Well, Parisa had her significant moments too. I am happy that she is growing up as an active, spontaneous, sometimes adventurous, and charming girl. Sometimes it is amazing how she can offer me solace, energy and a driving force to move on. Life without her would be dreary.

Parisa loves helping me out in experimenting with food. She tried making pancakes, baking cakes. . .

Parisa enjoys performing on the stage and she had the chance thrice in 2016 – cultural day at her school where she performed in choreography in a Bangla song, summer club’s final program where she performed songs and choreography in a Japanese song and finally her graduation day at school where she performed song and rhymes. Just like Parisa, I experienced my share of thrill as well when I performed with 3 other colleagues in a short choreography with a Bangla movie song at the 12 Years Foundation Anniversary program of the Department of English of DIU on 31^st October 2016. It was exhilarating and entertaining. Raj and I made our informal amateurish guitar-song performance public and received much praise. We posted two covers on social media and got very warm responses from friends.

We had the chance to go on picnics in the winter time during early 2016 – one school picnic and another new presenters’ picnic. It was interesting to notice how Parisa took an active interest in picnic games and performances and took it to heart when we couldn’t qualify for a prize. Khala had been planning for a long time to take us to her village Palla in Magura. This trip in March was spiritually and mentally very satisfying! I was taken aback by the simplicity and spirit of the people of the place, and by the role women played in social gatherings. By the end of the year I found myself becoming the moral parent of a girl named Tarsina (rhymes with mine) who lives in Magura.

We also took Parisa to places like Greentech Resort for celebrating the Bangla New Year, Reverie Resort, Cox’s Bazar and Nepal once again. I had a conference presentation in Nepal in February and another at ULAB in May 2016.  The first one went fantastic and I made a friend named Sukmita; whereas the second one was unnerving with the presence of an academic giant in the audience. I also went to Chandpur for conducting a workshop on ‘Activities for Large Classes’ for the school-college teachers in August. Thanks BELTA for considering me as one of the facilitators. The trip was intellectually rewarding.

I also participated in couple of workshops/seminars, a few to be mentioned are –Providing Effective Feedback, Use of Bangla Phonetic Alphabet (BPA) for Teaching English Pronunciation, Assessment for Learning, Self -assessment and improvement plan, Use of Technology in the ESL Classroom. But the one which left a remarkable impression on me and connected me to the year-end thoughts and resolution is the Workshop on Universal Human Values & Professional Ethics conducted by a group of Indian professionals. This made me look into the purpose of our doings from an entirely different perspective. My temperament changed as well! I developed a better understanding and my tolerance level increased which in turn helped me in my anger-management.

Parisa took up skating lessons in February and showed remarkable progress. 

Pori’s bonding with her two friends i.e. Nabiha and Labiba, and her cousin Arshia evolved. Now as I overhear their conversations or watch the games they play or listen to the songs they love, I understand that Parisa is moving on in her life from being a kid to being a girl. I also made conscious efforts in improving my relationship with my two friends and in laws and I think I fared well.

I also arranged a get together of old students at my place. The fact that we are still connected and I could ask for their help is so rewarding! Teaching has its rewards - not in cash but in kinds. 

As I couldn’t be there for Parisa’s birthday in 2015, I made lot of plans for 2016. The birthday was a bang and I made her cry at the end!

The year also had its downsides. The first to mention is the disastrous promotion board interview in December which imprinted these words in me for life – ‘You are like a stone which doesn’t roll and gathers moss’. No matter how harsh this sounded then, it bore some degree of truth in it as I look back and analyze my personal and professional lives, and see how stagnant I became even though people in general found me rolling and moving at a fast pace (the impression I created with my fast-paced busy life!).

In 2016 it hit us that Maya is growing old. Her teeth started falling out and we are mentally prepared that we might have the bad news within a year or so . . . Two friends moved away due to different personal reasons, and I strongly believe that I had to contribute less to the changed circumstances. It’s disconcerting nonetheless as I was (still am to certain extent) mentally and emotionally dependent on them. In addition, two colleagues moved out of the country and migrated to Canada.

The year ended with an eye-opening trip to Charfassion, Bhola which just like the picture in which I am looking at the sunset made me look forward to the year 2017 after closing a few chapters of 2016.