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    Volume 9 Issue 23| June 4, 2010|


 Letters
 Voicebox
 Chintito
 Cover Story
 Perceptions
 Environment
 Musings
 Reflections
 Literature
 Impressions
 Neighbour
 Writing the Wrong
 Heritage
 Photography
 Art
 A Roman Column
 Health
 Perspective
 Book Review
 Star Diary
 Postscript

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Star Diary

Losing the Beauty

The literacy rate of Bangladesh has improved a lot over the past few decades. People are becoming more confident in speaking and writing in English. Nowadays everyone tries to speak as much English as possible and are more concentrating in improving their English skills. From a beggar to the wealthiest person of Bangladesh everyone tries to include English words in their speech. This is a positive sign for Bangladesh as the world is approaching towards globalization. But many children feel embarrassed in speaking in Bangla especially the new generations. They try to avoid learning this beautiful language as much as possible. They think that speaking in Bangla hurts their reputation. And most parents force their children to give their concentration in non Bengali subject. Therefore we should realize that learning Bangla is as important as learning English. It should be our first priority. The government should take the initiative in promoting this beautiful language of ours.
Rahim Abu Ali Sajwani
North South University
Dhaka

Football Mania

Loitering across the Dhanmondi Lake, I had the opportunity to eavesdrop on a heated argument between some teenagers. Listening to the pitch of their conversation, a more casual observer could have worried that violence might break out any moment. However, these belligerents were just a group of friends trying to settle an age-old dispute that heats up every time the World Cup football approaches -- who is better, Argentina or Brazil?
In Bangladesh, most football fans support either one of the Latino football giants. The arguments between the fans of two sides generally become hostile, and in some cases incidents of violence take place.
Paradoxically, in Latin America the scenario is totally different. The football mania and the Argentina-Brazil rivalry is very much there. But when Argentina gets knocked out of the tournament, the people of that country throw their total support behind Brazil and vice versa. The hostility that exists between the two camps in our country is in complete contradiction to the scenario of those two countries where the football fans of the two camps generally tend to support each other whole-heartedly.
S Haque
Dhaka

All in a day's work

A few weeks ago I was screening about 200 resumes for an international firm and came across the most bizarre 'skill sets.' This may be a little mean, but they write all kinds of things you would never dream of seeing on a job resume. They mention things like their height, weight, chest, shoulder, and complexion: tan/South Asian/Brown. One person wrote, “I have recently performed hajj. Now I am ready and can work with utmost honesty and dedication.” The funny thing is that they seem to think that this sort of information will help their application and don't realise that it is completely unnecessary and somewhat ridiculous. People also list the names of their parents and places they visited. In one application a person wrote “countries visited including …....and many many cities in Bangladesh.” Many will include their religion and marital status and one of them wrote under interests, “Ready to make friendships.” It was all pretty amusing but most of the applications went into the trash. It would probably be useful to have formal training available on how to construct a professional resume in all universities and work places to help future applicants.
A.R. Rahman
Badda, Dhaka


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