Napa Valley, Fort Bragg Trips with Roton

Roton came at 11th November Tuesday from New York to visit California for a week. He just called me 2 days prior and hence I was not enough prepared to take day offs from office. But as Shusmita now knows driving, she was able to drive him around the neighborhood when I was in office.

The very next day 12th November, I was working from home and we started for Napa Valley in the afternoon. Apparently Napa Valley seemed to be his most favorite place probably due to his long years of experience with restaurant jobs. After driving through Napa, we came back to Golden Gate Bridge at night. It was simply so foggy that we saw Golden Gate bridge hanging in the air like it's up in the heaven! It was simply too good...

While coming driving through the San Francisco downtown, I was so sleepy that eventually at around 9:30 PM or a little later, I hit a truck from behind in front of Pier 9 just few blocks away from my office. My favorite Honda Civic's front side got completely damaged, the door broke, the radaitor broke but none of us were injured, thanks to Almighty. Shusmita and Ahyan was in the back seat while Roton was in the navigator's seat.

As a routine, I called roadside assistance and towed it to San Francisco Major Body Repair shop. Ezaz took Nitol and drove to pick us from San Francisco. We had the dinner in his house late night.

This is my second car accident and I am not scared still now. It's all upto Almighty and I better not freak out about it. So after attending Safwan's birthday Saturday afternoon, we started for Fort Bragg again with the rental car that my insurance company is covering me now. We stayed there the night and roamed around the city downtown next morning. We went to the handmade ice cream shop and the Gabrielle that we liked visiting last time. On the way back home Sunday, we again stopped at Napa Velley. Just in case I forgot to mention, we had another small accident in the morning at home when we forgot to turn off the stove of kitchen that was boiling 8 eggs. We went to tase different typoes of Dosa in Dosa Palace, Fremont and when we came back we found smoke smells everywhere in the house. Well you guess what, the fire department had to come into the house to stop the stove after it has been continuosly alarming for a long time. Big deal? No big deal!! This is life.

Roton went back to New york at Monday morning.

Bangladesh Chess Olympiad Team 2008

Chess Olympiad Dresden 2008 has achieved the highest level of registration in history turning it into the biggest Chess Olympiad of all ages. After the final closing of the registration list on September the 19th there were more than 2000 active participants announced. It will be held from November the 12th till November the 25th in Dresden, Germany. A perfect place to play big chess events after a successful world chess championship match in Bonn, Germany last month.

With 152 registered nations Dresden surpasses the previous Olympiad 2006 in Turin with 7 more countries. The participants distribute themselves to 275 teams, therefrom 156 in the main tournament including the second team of Germany and the teams of the deaf, correspondence chess players and blind persons. 119 women teams are starting.

The very popular Susan Polgar's Popular Chess blog provided an entry today on the Bangladesh Chess Team that left for Germany to participate this big event. I was proud to see Bangladesh's map in that entry. I know most of the players there personally and I wish success to this team whole heaterdly. I wish success to this team in the Dresden Chess Olympiad 2008. To see the complete list of all the chess participating nations and players, in this Olypiad, please click this link http://tournaments.chessdom.com/chess-olympiad-2008-teams .

It may not be a known fact to some of you that the current World Chess Champion Vishwanathan Anand is only second when it comes to being the earliest Grand Master in South Asia (Indian Sub-continent). He is only behind Bangladeshi Grand Master Niaz Murshed and you may look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niaz_Murshed to know more about him. But in terms of volume, head count and number of years after independence, Bangladesh is quite smaller than India. It's the willpower of the people there, and count on us - we are coming up, slowly but steadily; not only in winning Noble prize or being a Test Cricket nation but also in other sectors like this.

Be proud of being a Bangladeshi !!!