Star Diary

RHINOCEROUS SYNDROME

My job involves meeting all kinds of people from all walks of life. Our office takes in interns every summer, most of whom come from abroad and wish to learn more about our trade. These people are hard working and very eager to learn what they can and do all their assignments diligently, hoping to get a good evaluation at the end of their internship. This summer however, we found an amusing exception to the rule. A fellow from a local university pulled a lot of strings and went to great lengths to get an internship with us. However, after one week of showing up regularly and collecting assignments, he started behaving strangely. He never seemed to complete any of these assignments and always had bizarre excuses such as “My father took the car with him today so I couldn't come to office” (this is a grown man of 20, mind you). The three weeks that we saw him, he hardly ever came in to work and failed to complete a single assignment. Then one day he stopped coming altogether and we put him down as a lost cause and moved on. Amusingly enough, about five months later, he started contacting our boss asking for a letter saying he completed his internship with us. He continued to pester him till he finally agreed to meet and berate him on his irresponsible behaviour and nonsensical request. To our great surprise, this man showed no sign of embarrassment or remorse and instead requested that he be given a poor evaluation as he needed it to complete his course. This was shocking to say the least as he had not done an internship with us at all! It's amazing how thick-skinned and shameless people can be these days.

Halima Kawsar
Motijheel, Dhaka

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Photo: Star File

A Musical Night Marred

I was at this musical programme recently where many renowned local and international classical musicians were performing. It was a fabulous atmosphere and I enjoyed myself greatly, but there were times when I wished I had more sophisticated audience watching with me and appreciating what was before them. I say this because there were times when people were talking and laughing loudly during performances while others were desperately trying to listen. Some people seemed to have come just to socialise and pretend they were cultured. All they did was walk around the place obstructing peoples' view, trying to find people they knew to chat with. Others would clap loudly in the middle of a performance or other inappropriate places, when the performer himself requested them not to when he began to play. These things saddened me greatly and I hope that people will learn proper etiquette when they are before such legends in the future and will also truly learn to appreciate their talent and the privilege of being able to watch them perform live.

A K Kabir
Banani, Dhaka

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GREAT MISTAKE!

Most parents don't want to admit their children into primary schools. They think that the quality of education in primary schools is substandard. So they are interested to send their children to a kindergarten or private institution hoping to get them a good education.

However in kindergarten they take a large amount of money as fee and session charge and we never stop to think if their teaching is any better. In my area there is a kindergarten named “New Nation Model School” in which my cousin is enrolled. They give their students a suggestion sheet before each exam and put pressure on them and force them to memorise the material on the sheet. To begin with, the whole process is wrong, but when I examined this sheet I found numerous unacceptable mistakes (spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and translation mistakes). The course teacher who wrote the sheet cannot possibly be properly educated judging from what s/he wrote. S/he made spelling mistakes like “traffick”(traffic), “Mosly” (mostly), “Propar” (proper), and “Holyday” (Holiday). This disheartened me greatly when I thought of how this can ruin so many childrens' opportunity to learn and receive a good education from qualified teachers. What will become of them?

Shanjida Rimi
Dhaka

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