I am an Australian and have been living in Dhaka from the end of last November. Before that I worked as an executive chef in a five star hotel in China. There I met a fellow Australian who was working at Dhaka Sheraton at that time. That was the first time I heard about Dhaka.

When I arrived, I was surprised. The city was quite big, noisy and always moving -- wonderfully busy and yet chaotic; people were racing everywhere. Everyone is in a hurry and nobody had any patience. But they are very friendly and helpful.

To me Dhaka is not a modern city. The amount of rickshaws was overwhelming. I do not like rickshaws because they slow down the traffic. And that is terrible. This was also my first time in a Muslim country so I noticed different local customs. For an instance here ladies are clad in colourful sarees.

I attended two wedding receptions in Pabna and Comilla. These were wonderful experiences. I observed the village rituals and methods of these events. The house of the bride was decorated with colourful flowers and papers, friends of the bride were singing wedding songs. The countryside was also very different from the city.

Other things I dislike about the city are the traffic, pollution and corruption. The political situation is very strange. Everything is centralised in Dhaka. Once I went to Chittagong I found it comparatively manageable than Dhaka. There were more greenery, less traffic and it was comparatively less busy.

People have a difficult and hard life here. There is a high rate of unemployment. I feel really bad when I see small children begging on the streets. The local private companies are doing good business and trying to employ people. They are driving the country but I have not seen any remarkable strategy from the government side to deal with the situation.

Being a chef I have a different kind of thinking about food than a normal person. I had been to many countries as a chef and tasted many foods, so for me the impact of tasting new dishes is not surprising and it is very difficult to say which food is exotic.

I enjoy spicy foods like curry and biriyani and the dates and sweetmeats of Shab-e-Barat. I do not like Hilsha because it has too many bones. I like pangash, rui, Black Jew and prawns. Seafood is good and vegetables are fresh in Bangladesh.

This is the first time I am going to observe Ramadan in a Muslim country so I am looking forward to it and the Eid festival.

As told to Durdana Ghias