Habib Siddiqui

Ref: http://www.e-bangladesh.org/2009/10/21/grid-lock-dhaka-%E2%80%93-some-suggestions/comment-page-1/#comment-8967 In e-Bangladesh Engineer Kh. A. Saleque offered some practical solutions to the gridlock situation with roads in Dhaka. I was in Dhaka just the last month, and I could testify to the fact that nearly 80% of one's productive time is lost or wasted in traffic congestion alone. That is too much by any standard. By the time one reaches one's destination, very little is left of one's energy to concentrate on matters important. Many cities with equally high population density have mitigated such congestion problems. True that many of these countries are rich and can afford to implement solutions that are improbable for a country like Bangladesh. And yet with a strong government desire and well thought out plan that takes into consideration pros and cons of a futuristic plan is still within our reach to solve this problem in our lifetime. In my own writing earlier, I...

Last Friday I returned from a three-week long overseas trip. This has been the third of such trips for me in a year. These days, air travels are no fun for any passenger. The traveler is forced to pay for all security checks, arrive at the airport at least two to three hours ahead of the departure time and go through multiple checkpoints. And then, most flights are late in departing from the gate. In these days of job insecurity and high unemployment, security jobs at the airports seem to be exceptions. The companies doing business in this area, whether these are selling machines or providing security guards, are all doing great. I am told that many such security firms are actually managed by former Israeli agents. After all, they had the least number of plane hijacking! They ought to know something better that others don’t. As usual, the security check-ups in the JFK are the worst. The security guys won’t allow anyone to pass through the security check points with any liquid -- even c...

I returned home to Philadelphia last night from my trip to Bangladesh. The Qatar flight from Doha arrived earlier than scheduled although the flight had taken off almost an hour late. The in-flight service was great. I stayed in a hotel, provided by the Qatar Airways, for almost a full day. Doha is a very organized, neat city, with lots of construction work going on everywhere. There were too many hotels for the people touring or staying in hotels. I don't know what the builders are thinking! Most of the foreign workers were either Indian or Phillippinos. Many of the crew members in the plane were also from SE Asia (again from Thailand and the Philippines). I hardly saw any Bangladeshi except inside the Doha airport. The Indians have effectively taken over the hotel, catering and grocery industries in Qatar, many of them driving expensive foreign cars. Chevrolet was rather very common brand among most Qataris owning foreign cars. Weather was great, not too hot, for this time of the...